altoncustomtech

This is what Fi writes as the description of the cooling option copied and pasted directly from the website: Cooling: Self explanatory, the cooling channels are machined into the inside of the sub to help cool the coil FAR better. But there are some things that you sacrifice. There is less metal inside of the motor so it is a little weaker. If you are looking for a tone/burp only scenario for SPL we suggest that you do NOT get this option. Stick with only the P chamfer. Now if you are looking for a daily sub to beat on and you have 2000+ watts the BTL series is for you.
 It has to do with channels that are machined into the coil gap in the motor itself. I don't believe the cooling option has anything to do with the basket at all.

Didn't Nick or Scot say somewhere that they changed to a US supplier for the baskets as well as the rest of the steel.

To point 1, there's a lot of people who are biased against Kicker, and many more of us who aren't though. To point 2, you agree they "have no sound quality what so ever" and yet turn around and defend their purchase. Unless you're competing why would anyone buy a speaker if it didn't sound good? Or put another way, why would anyone WANT their music to sound bad? I think it's these kinds of questions that raise awareness to the decisions we're making and why some people get defensive to either the "for" or "against" arguments for any brand. I have personally heard several Kicker installations that sounded quite good, but they were built to. Always remember that resulting sound you get is 10% equipment and 90% install.

Same here, had a guy bring his truck recently because his sub amp was going on and off then quit turning on but he had checked his fuse and it looked fine. Sure enough it did look just fine but a quick check with a DMM showed it was open. Being an AGU style fuse I set it on it's end and tapped it with my pocket knife and viola it worked again, the fuse element had came loose on one end. It's funny though, he's not gotten a new fuse yet, LOL.

That box is quite large, a little much for those subs. If you're tuned to 39hz and playing anything that has frequencies below that with a box that large and with very much power you're heading straight for disaster no matter what sub you're using. He's right. If they're moving so far as to start to pop you're just WAY overdoing it. Gotta change something and the sub sonic filter is used to prevent the subs from playing frequencies below tuning. Nick @ Fi has a quick, simple tutorial on setting the SSF somewhere on here, I'll see if I can find it for you. EDIT: Anyone know where the hell that's at?? Nick had a post on here somewhere where he explained how to play tones and watch the sub's movement to find the boxes true tuning, then adjust the SSF accordingly using the same method. That would likely do him some good once he gets these repaired. I've searched like hell and can't find it.

I doubt it... I can't imagine tearing the surrounds on those, you almost have to be driving them beyond their mechanical limits. Your enclosure may be too large or you're SSF isn't properly set and you're driving them well below the tuning of the enclosure, or both. What is the enclosure supposed to be tuned to? How did you set your SSF?

Hopefully everything is visible enough in the pictures.... Here's the whole cabinet. Here's a close up of a couple of the diodes and the relays. If you look closely you can see where the lined side of the diode is going to the RED positive wire (numbered 202 & 154) and the other side goes up to the BLACK negative wire (numbered 204, 203 and 155). Every relay has it's own diode.

The line on the diode indicates it's negative lead, much like an electrolytic capacitor is marked. The line goes to the positive. If you install the diode with the line to ground it will either pop a fuse or blow up the diode. I'll take a picture of a control cabinet here with the diodes installed in it.

Remember to wire the diode in backwards, put the negative lead on the positive terminal and the positive lead on the negative terminal or you'll blow a fuse or smoke the diode.

That was my point in asking how it was wired. Glad to see you saw where I was going with all the questions! Wiring the diode as I described should do the trick, but it could be much better to wire it to an accessory wire off the key and keep it away from the HU altogether.

So... When you turn off the toggle switch there's no noise, but when the compressor pressure switch is turning it off and on you hear the noise, correct? And, you have the diode wired as I described, basically backwards in the circuit? Also, exactly where in the scheme of the wiring is the toggle switch?

The diode wires between pins 85 & 86, but with the negative side on the positive. It has to be wired backwards like that in order to work properly as I explained above. It doesn't hurt the diode because it takes something like 500 or 1000 volts to reverse flow one of those diodes. When you say it doesn't happen when you turn off the current to the remote wire, how are you doing this? disconnecting the wire or turning off the key or what?

It sounds as though you may be getting coil collapse feedback. When a coil is energized it creates a magnetic field which pulls in the switch (duh right?). What happens when you take power off the coil though is that the magnetic field collapses and causes a momentary reverse current that can cause problems. In Industrial applications when you have panels full of other relays that can be particularly bad as it can cause the other relays to "chatter" and possibly pull them in momentarily causing all kinds of unknown mayhem. We alleviate that problem by installing diodes across the coil terminals on the relays. That diode is installed wrong on purpose as well and what that does is not allow current to flow through the diode when the relay is powered (that would create a short and isn't good) but when power to the coil is dropped that slight reverse current flows through the diode and is dissipated. Not completely sure that's your problem, but diodes are cheap and it's an easy fix to try. I can snap a pic of one of our control cabinets here at work to show you an example. Diodes like this one.

Me too!!!! (Note to self: Really need to get started on my build)

Yeah Chop's an awesome guy. Yeah I'm a member of the team, however with work and family responsibilities I've yet to make it to a show. Hoping to make it up for one of the smaller shows soon. I have to admit, I've wanted to do an oversized/underpowered enclosure build for a long time. Something that border's the absurd over the norm size for a single driver, play with port size and tuning and all just to see what can be done with something really different. When I was a young teen I had a friend who owned an '84 Caddy that had a single 10" on two old school 500 watt amps in an insane 6th order (dual ported chamber) bandpass enclosure. I witnessed that thing hit 157.xx db. Mind you that was back in the early '90's and on an AB mic setup so it probably wasn't actually anything that good and the damn thing sounded like absolute ass on any kind of music but it was the loudest thing in town hands down. The enclosure was built into the trunk of the car, taking up most of it for the chambers alone. Each of the ports were square in shape and came into the cabin to something like a wall opening all the way out like giant horns. I've still never seen ANYTHING like it, and probably never will. It still seems like Jeff was ahead of his time on that thing.

Jacob generally recommends a smaller enclosure when running anything over rated power. Most of what kills them is mechanical damage from over excursion. They have an absolute ton of motor force with a suspension that has a hard time keeping up, or in other words their thermal power handling outperforms the mechanical, in general. However, I believe a person who's responsible with gain settings and the volume knob could get by just fine. I myself am planning on running about the same power to my 3 with the equivalent air space for each sub.

It turned out great! to the grocery getter installs!!!

to the forum!! I think you'll find this to be one of the best forums on the interwebz.

Does the Escort have an actual frame to ground to? I'd be surprised if it does as it seems like those kinds of cars (all, not just escorts) are never anything more than tin cans with a little sub frame in the front for the engine/transmission/suspension to mount to, but then I don't know much about those particular cars as Ford's in general give me hives. May he be better off running a 2/0 ground wire to the rear? I agree 100%, well made and well finished. Is it his first enclosure Ken?

to the forum fellow Hoosier, describe "central" Indiana LOL. I felt the same way about the other forums out there like ca.com, found this place and have never looked back! I assume the 18" tall limit is to stay below the window line for class purposes? I think after sub and port displacement you'll be in the 3.2ish cuft area which seems a tad small to me, maybe not though. I'm not familiar with the opti series subs so I can't speak much to that end. When you inverted the sub you gained enclosure space and (if I'm remembering correctly, that could be bass ackwards) raised tuning a little. Changes like that are what makes the differences in competition from everything I've read and seen. You'll find lots of good people and information here, so don't fret you'll get answers.

Like another lower powered sub that has already been mentioned they need more publicity or word spread or something. There's nothing wrong with a great lower powered sub like the X but everyone thinks they need 1 or 2 thousand watts worth of subs to get loud enough.

When you're constantly looking for new ways to hoard up cash to buy more equipment. When you're coming up with outlandish reasons to tell the wife why you're still getting equipment, and she believes them. When your bedroom closet looks like the store room of a fully stocked local shop packed front to back and floor to ceiling with equipment. When just about everyone you meet calls you the speaker guy. When everyone you talk to asks why they're always hearing thunder before your wife drives up in her mini van. When the owner of the local gas station asks you to be sure to have it turned down before entering the lot because he's afraid you're going to break the windows from the flex he sees them doing. When the employees of the same gas station thank you for knocking a blockage out of the ice machine when you gave someone a demo out front.

Yeah... that does suck. You shouldn't have much problem recouping most of the cost on everything considering the age on it, and if you keep up the posting you'll have the count you need to sell everything very quickly. Everything you listed there are hot items.

I doubt they take returns either, but why not simply try to sell it outright? I'm sure someone could use a Q10, besides, why can't you use it/want to return it?