Impious

Painting it wouldn't be any different than fiberglass resin. It's going to act as a sealant and possibly make enclosure walls a little "smoother" for air flow transfer. MIGHT be measurable on a microphone but I seriously doubt the difference would be significant enough to be audible, unless the enclosure was poorly sealed to start with.

Im not chase numbers anymore, i just need a sub that can take some abuse a daily ground pounder. Plan is 2 18s in Escalade Ext. That is being built as a show car but can still crush in the lanes if need be. If you were leaning towards a high powered ported system, the Zcon would be a better option IMO based on T/S parameters, the Zcon is a more aligned with optimum ported enclosure performance whereas the SP4 is really geared more towards sealed enclosure or large low tuned ported enclosure (which aren't really necessary/desired in car audio). Peak output will be pretty close to the same with either driver in similar enclosure volumes/tuning. The difference is really going to be in damping/transient response, and I would imagine in a typical car audio ported enclosure the edge would go to the Zcon there. If you were looking for a high powered sealed system, the SP4 would end up being a better option.

With no idea of your goals, enclosure requirements, etc it's impossible to recommend one over the other.

Without knowing anything about your equipment, your available space, etc etc it's impossible for us to assist.

How much power they can handle mechanically depends on the enclosure. They aren't "underrated" enough thermally to really make any difference. For a thermal rating sticking to the rated power handling is more than sufficient.

Is this a soft top or might the top be off? If that's the case, you're probably better off with the extended response and higher output potential of a ported enclosure. For the sealed enclosure route, you can if you want to try. It most certainly won't hurt anything. Try it, see how you like it, remove some listen again, see if you like it. Start around 1lb per square foot of enclosure volume. Make sure you have a solid loading surface, make sure you leave sufficient clearance between the enclosure and floor. None of the above. Obviously make sure you seal the seams, but beyond that use appropriate bracing and you'll be fine. Probably not a bad idea.

I have one. What questions did you have Nick?

Fs really has nothing to do with high frequency response. That's based on inductance and Re. As for the OP: Without being there to hear it, it's hard to give any real guesses. The Gcon was likely not designed for performing up to 200hz, so there's no guaranty that it's going to play that high. Without knowing the inductance I can't really tell you exactly where the driver is going to roll off, though. It's also possible that it's more psycho-acoustical in nature.....i.e. the low end response is exaggerated which makes the high frequencies seem less prevalent. I wouldn't really suggest using subs up to 200hz anyways. My best suggestion would be to lower the lowpass to something reasonable and upgrade your front speakers to improve the midbass performance.

Le only affects transient response (and not the entire transient behavior, only the impulse response) in so far as it affects the high frequency response of the driver. For the 13AV.2, the Le was around 4.7mH with an Re of 4.9ohm. This puts the corner frequency (-3db) at 166hz. So the Le was creating a lowpass filter with a crossover point of 166hz. Basic crossover theory stipulates that you would want this Le corner frequency atleast an octave above your intended operating bandwidth (i.e. the active LPF). Where did you lowpass the sub? It was probably set somewhere around 60-80hz, which is a full octave below the Le corner frequency. So the active lowpass crossover was the limiting factor in the impulse response of the subwoofer, not the Le. If you wanted to use the driver up to 200hz or better then yes, the Le have been the limiting factor. But when lowpassed and acting as a true subwoofer, the lowpass crossover is what was limiting the impulse portion of the transient response. I'm not telling you that you should have liked the 13AV.2 more than you did. I'm just telling you it was not because of the Le. Realize I'm explaining all of this to you so that you spend your time choosing a subwoofer based on the more important factors rather than eliminating potential drivers for the the wrong reasons, or ending up with a driver that doesn't fit your goals because you looked at the wrong pieces of data when shopping.

Have I ever mentioned how much I FUCKING HATE SOUND DEADENING. I don't mind installing stereo equipment as much, atleast the end result is the result we are after.....reproducing music. But sound deadening is such a bitch....tear everything in the car apart just to (hopefully be able to) put it all back together again, breaking a few things in the process.

You can't upload images directly from your hard drive. Upload them to the gallery here then post the links. Or just post the brand & model #

For reference, some of your target parameters are contradictory. High sensitivity and small enclosures simply isn't an option unless you're will to sacrifice low end extension. Also you aren't going to find a subwoofer possessing both qualities of high sensitivity and high Qts (.5 is on the higher side) due to the physics involved. Unless you have a specific enclosure you intend to use, don't worry about the Qts. It's partially needed determines what type of enclosure/alignment to use, but don't base your decision off of Qts alone. Instead look at the alignment options and the response of the driver in those alignments to make your decision. Really for subwoofer duties don't worry about driver sensitivity and rather focus on an a subwoofer that is able to fit into an efficient alignment that meets your volume requirements if efficiency is your one of your goals. I wouldn't worry too much about Le as generally speaking your lowpass crossover is going to dominate in the higher frequencies rather than Le.....unless Le-induced corner frequency is extremely low or you plan to run the driver up extremely high in frequency. Xmax is one of your target parameters I would agree with.

What enclosure volume/tuning you plan to use it in.

You are correct, the width of the surround affects Sd. Sd is also affected by how the cone area was actually measured. Some companies use 1/2 the surround, others use 1/3 of the surround. So you could send the same driver to two different people and potentially get two different Sd figures, depending on which method each used.

Don't feel bad, I got one yesterday.

Check to make sure the tinsel leads of the bad coil didn't simply come loose. Might be as simple as resoldering the lead and then readjusting the system to make sure it doesn't happen again.

After you place the order with SSA your driver is hand built by a smaller sized operation in Las Vegas, NV. Sundown's SA series are built in more mass quantities at a large buildhouse in China, so Sundown/dealers have stock on hand.

No, I was concurring with M5 that I wouldn't run active off of an amplifier only.

And I would concur.

It doesn't "know" anything. The amplifier has separate crossover controls for channels 1 & 2 and channels 3 & 4. You will need to set the crossover controls for the channels as you intend to use them. I.E. for the front speakers you'll need to set the crossover to HPF on channels 1 & 2, then for channels 3 & 4 you'll need to set the crossover to LPF for the subwoofer.

DO NOT USE BASS BOOST. Improperly using the bass boost can lead to clipping which can potentially be damaging to the subwoofer in certain circumstances. Really in car audio there is almost zero need to use any type of bass boost with a properly designed enclosure. Bass is the easiest thing to create in car audio, it comes naturally due to the environment.

You know what's funny is 10 years ago eD had a terrible reputation because they would moderate their forum like nazi's and anything that wasn't praise or even could be misconstrued as anything but positive was deleted and the user banned. Now it seems that behavior is standard, not just for the companies but for their friends who are mods, and the few exceptions to this policy are places like SSA that lets all opinions be freely spoken, positive or negative. Negative comments might spark a disagreement in the thread, but atleast the posts still stand rather than being deleted and the user immediately banned.

I figured you were talking about Wallace's install. Keep in mind that is a custom shallow mount 8" midbass driver, it's less than 2" deep (Illusion ND8 frame & motor with IDQ8 softparts IIRC). Not to mention that's a pure midbass, it doesn't play anywhere into the midrange.....tucked up under that dash like that isn't going to work well for midrange playing into the midrange, and it doesn't look like there's enough room to drop it down much. And if you can't do that yourself, and install like that would end up pretty pricey. But again, fix your install first and decide how much change still needs to be made before you spend any money.

Correct, set the LPF by ear after everything is installed. Setting it to a specific frequency isn't important, all that really matters is how it sounds once you're done. Whether that means it's set to 80hz, 84hz, 73hz, 68hz, etc doesn't matter as long as you're happy with the sound of the results. A SSF is a subsonic filter. It is literally nothing more than a highpass filter with a really low crossover frequency and typically a steep slope (24db/oct). The intent of the SSF is to reduce the excursion of the subwoofer at low frequencies where it's possible the driver can potentially over-excurt and become damaged. When a subwoofer plays frequencies below the tuning frequency of a ported enclosure, a condition called "unloading" begins to occur where excursion isn't controlled by the enclosure. This leads to the possibility of over-driving the subwoofer and causing damage, with the risk increasing the further below tuning the subwoofer is playing. The SSF will increasingly limit the amount of power going to the driver and hence maintain a safe level of excursion. There are a lot of theories on where to set the SSF. Some will say to set it to the same frequency as the enclosure tuning. I disagree with this as it potentially unnecessarily limits the output within the intended passband (i.e. you'll lose some output where you probably didn't want to lose output, unless you are intentionally using it as a form of equalization....which isn't a bad idea either). Generally a safe setting is around 1/2 octave below tuning....to figure out where that is, multiply your tuning frequency by .75. Or load the enclosure and subwoofer into a modeling program, input the power you'll be using, look at the excursion graph and see where excursion begins to exceed Xmax (though this is generally around 1/2 octave below tuning, which is why that's a fairly safe setting).

If midbass is your only problem, I wouldn't even look for new speakers until you fix the kickpanels. With a little more breathing room your current speakers might be capable of what you are after. As M5 said, the 6W4P or anything similar isn't going to be worth a shit in the midbass. And as Stefan said, you are not going to be able to mix-n-match speakers and run passive. If you are not going to go active (which I agree it's a good idea that you don't), then stick with a standard pre-built comp set. But again, I would fix the install first and try your current speakers again. See if there is a positive change.