altoncustomtech

Again, your attention to detail on this build is astounding. Absolutely beautiful. Quick question though, I saw the bolts through the A pillars and the brackets on the back of the mid pods, but I didn't see exactly how they mount up. I'll eventually be doing similar testing and mounting in my Jimmy and that looks like a great way to mount, aim, and test a pod type speaker mount and especially for temporary testing. The cleanliness of the wire runs and the install in general should be the level we all strive to achieve. I'm really looking forward to your thoughts and opinions on the overall sound when it's complete. It should be quite nice! I can imagine the quietness of the ride as it is now with all you've done to make it quiet is remarkable as well.

They should be marked + and - (red or black) and typcially the terminals are paired up on each side of the sub for each coil on a DVC sub. A few manufacturers have gone to using some proprietary and funky terminals to make wiring them easier, but from all the pics I found of the Type E's they don't have those types of terminals so it should be pretty straight forward. As long as you connect the + and - up as shown in the diagrams you should be good to go.

Here ya go....

Can't be done with two dual 4 ohm subs. They can only be wired to 1 ohm, 4 ohms, or 16 ohms.

What is the voice coil configuration on them? We need to know if they're single 4 ohm, dual 4 ohm, dual 2 ohm, etc. in order to get you the diagram you need.

Doing research for work...... lol

to the forum!

to the forum!

Even if you can just get the surround, which I don't think would be horribly difficult, you'll still need to follow most of the steps involved in reconing. Once the surround is cut and cleaned off the basket and cone, the cone is going to be able to rock side to side and can be put back together misaligned. You'll still have to take the dust cap off and put shims in the gap to keep the coil centered in the gap while you attach the new surround. I've never done it with an XCON, or anything nearly as large but I've replaced surrounds on a bunch of speakers I've picked up over the years from garage/yard sales, second hand stores, etc. I got the surrounds in kits from Parts Express but those kits don't have the kinds of surrounds these subs use so unfortunately they're not an option to get them from. I wasn't sure how many times you've done things like this and I wanted to be sure you knew it had to be centered up before gluing it.

Anyone?

to the forum!

Very nice truck indeed.

Nothing going on at work and I leave early today!! Got about 20 minutes before I need to go, so........

Actually the response is better without mid's signal going through the passive at all. It gets downright groovy with the active crossover turned on with a flat EQ, something I just couldn't do with them before. That's why I was ranting about the passive's. It's as if there's something in them that is changing the signal and making the response in that range stronger, probably by attenuating other frequencies, and causing the worst of the issue. I could have run the mid without the passive at all and be happy with the response as it is now, they sound a little better than I remember them sounding when I first installed them. Either way it doesn't really matter, the crappy bastard passive things are coming out and the set is going to be ran active anyway. I'm also afraid there's a tweeter that's already damaged too, that's not helping anything either. I have some Dayton DC28FST-8 tweeters I picked up for another project that got scrapped as I started to learn why multiple drivers playing the same frequencies is a no no. Perhaps after getting things installed and setup for active listening they might be a better choice to use than the original tweeters?

Well, can anyone explain what's happening with the passive crossovers? Let me explain. After I started the other thread about the axis question it was suggested to me to test each individual driver without the passive crossover's connected. I remember when I did that some of the issues I was having with the extreme, ear bleeding midrange went away. I never got a chance to work on that anymore but I was playing with it again yesterday and found that was exactly what happened. I left the tweeters on the passive's during my test and just moved the wires on the mids to the amp inputs terminals and viola, the harsh midrange at around 2-2.5k was much better. Still a little strong but manageable and much easier to listen to. That brings me back around to the question, what could possibly have happened to the crossovers to cause an issue like that? Running the mids full range with no crossover still had some breakup and issues, but as soon as I turned on the LPF to 2.5k it smoothed them right out. Of course it sounded like ass again because there was no teble, but it showed me for sure the passive crossovers are causing an issue. My only question is why. I can kind of see, with a component set that's only rated for 80wrms and having about 50% more power on tap to run them where the heat might could cause an issue over time but it seems more likely it would cause something to fail right away instead of change something in the response. I dunno, I'm just ranting at this point. Also really aggravated with the truck, it's tight quarters, and trying to find a place to hide the Solid 2, lol. I'm really wanting to test the set fully active and see what I can get from them with everything crossed over right.

to the forum!

to the forum! You've definitely come to the right place to learn.

I still can't drive the truck, but if you didn't mind traveling over to where I work I'd be glad to show it to you. If we don't get a chance to show it to you before, I plan on having it up in Indy on more than one occasion next year and hopefully we can get together then. The sub tested out very very well. My sister is using it right now in her Durango (same enclosure) and is loving it. It lays out the lows just a little better than the DCON and is just as loud on the power she has. He's got himself a good driver IMHO but I've not heard anything more from him about it. I had to give it a break from the van though, the Sundown 2K was going to turn that bad boy inside out, lol.

There's still a lot of tuning to be done (gains, crossovers, etc.) but I think it's stellar so far!

I wasn't going to post this up, but my little brother insisted and I figured I would go ahead and share. Here's a quick little video I took to show him the XCON in action. I played and played and played with the tuning on the PR's until I got it just where I wanted it. To facilitate easy tuning I wrapped a small block of wood in paper towels and inserted it in the enclosure (to simulate the airspace the PR's would take up when mounted correctly) and mounted the PR's inverted so I could add and take away weight until I got the tuning just right. As it is now the PR's are tuned right about 31hz and that little sub can lay it down like no other ten inch I've ever played with before. When I get more free time I'll permanently mount the PR's but for now it's doing fine as it is. So, here it is the first video of the XCON and matching pair of passive radiators.

Damn ... what a detailed description !!! Thank you Sir !!!How is your time alignment ??? Can you actually tell where your stage and image is ?? ... or can you actually tell where your drivers are located ??? ... and most important, When listening to well recorded music ... Can you actually tell where your Sub stage is located ??? Reason I ask this is because once I got my substage time aligned to "match up" with my midbass drivers ... my midbass got tremendously strong, more dynamic, and ALOT easier to tune ... It's almost like there is a seemless transition between the midbass and the sub bass ... Somehow I missed this post, lol. The time alignment is pretty good I think since the stage and imaging are pretty good. The stage is up high, above the dash, pretty much where it should be. Imaging is fair but it does move around which I attribute completely to the installation and the fact the mids in in the factory locations near the floor aiming at each other and way off axis, especially compared to the tweeters. So yes, you can tell where the drivers are, it's not a transparent representation but compared to how almost anything I've listened to sounds it's really damn good. The subs are time aligned and sound just like they're right in the front of the van (when it's not loud enough that everything is rattling, all that sound deadening and the Q's still broke shit loose) and they help keep the midbass response decent but the upper end of the midbass still suffers and I still really think it's due to the mids being choked where they mount in the doors and baffles, it's just too damned tight for the to breathe right. Oh I'm not swapping anything at any kind of fast. The only thing I'm doing with all these drivers is getting an ear for the differences between them for now. I am slowly working toward getting the second two channel amp in so I can run the current component set active first and see what that does to the blooming midrange and see if it gets any easier to dial in with the EQ. The full ranges, extra mid basses, and all that is simply for playing around with the idea of different setups and what they could help or hurt in the future. I already know I want more than the current component set can bring to the table as they sit and if they end up falling short after taking them active then I have some other things to try out. This will be an ongoing effort to get it where I want it, I have accepted that, but I have little experience with an active setup (more like none of my own) and I've never had any experience using a full range and dedicated midbass either. I figured there's no time like the present to start getting some familiarity not only with what I'm trying to work on and correct right now, but the kind of setup that I've been thinking about doing in the future. The other problem is I can't spend a great deal of time tweaking and tuning the truck since I can't drive it, so I figured play with these little things gives me an opportunity to get some experience with them and continue to learn about this stuff.

Yeah, I don't even see how they would allow that for competition, then again I know nothing of the rules. How they did the setup sounds neat but had to have been way more trouble than it was really worth. The van does really damn good, but the components in the Jimmy leave a lot to be desired. They have incredibly strong midbass for 6.5's. They're powered by a Sundown 125.2 and give enough midbass to kick your pant leg around. I have them crossed fairly low (50hz iirc) but I also have the EQ turned down at 40hz and 125hz just to keep the sound halfway even or else the midbass would outrun everything else. The midrange is where they have the most trouble though and it seems to be most of the range too. It's the worst in the 2.5k neighborhood (break-up node, feels like it could rip your ears off) but the entire midrange sounds as though they're playing into a great big cardboard box. It's dull, exaggerated and lifeless, clear as a bell with no distortion at all but completely BLEH. The tweeters aren't bad at all, or don't seem to be, but they kinda wash out in all that's wrong with the midrange. I have begun to wonder if some of the components of the passive aren't actually going bad or something like that in the signal chain is going wrong because it's far worse now than it was when I first installed the components and amps. Part of my testing is to get a little listening time on these 3 inchers to get familiar with how they sound on a different amplified source then throw them in the Jimmy and see if the dull and bloated midrange problems still exist. If they do then I have a signal issue somewhere in the HU or amp, if not then I know there's definitely something going on with the components and my goal then is to discover if it's possibly in the passive crossovers or if it's an actual driver issue. Aside from that, giving their less than ideal locations and aiming the stage and imaging aren't bad at all but I know it can be considerably better. I'm really looking forward to playing with the full ranges though to see just how good my stage and imaging could possibly get with something like them up high and on axis. Also I've got an idea on how to build some enclosures to fit into the doors that will take up the whole cavity at the front of the door in front of the window track. It will definitely require some sheet metal removal but I think if I do it right the results will be well worth the trouble of all the modifications. The thought of having a pair of 8" dedicated midbasses in ported enclosures tuned to about 65hz just sounds like lots of fun and smiles.

Yep, I saw the PM and replied. Just went through your entire Van's build log (Nice Ride BTW) and I did not see exactly how you have your front stage set up ... I see in the vids that your dash in nice and flat, but couldn't tell how you have everything installed ...I was just wondering if you could give me an idea on what you have going on there ... I seen a van similar at USACI Finals one year running advanced SQ classes and thought I could go back though my pics and see if I could figure out how he had it set up ... I'm almost positive everything was countersank into the dash with agressive angles and vented through the fender wells ... and I'm thinking his midbass drivers were in the Kicks vented through the fender wells too ... I would like to go back and check, but I do remember that it sounded AMAZING !!! There's no pictures of it because I built the baffles and installed all that before I had joined any forum and before realizing anyone would really be interested in seeing pictures of any of the builds I've done. It's really basic though with the passive crossover's each mounted under the driver/passenger seats. The window track, window motor mount, and factory speaker baffle are all one big plastic frame that bolts to the door in these vans. I took a grinder and eliminated the factory baffle from the frame then built a baffle that covered the frame where the factory baffle used to be. I then put CLD (more than necessary) on the outer door skin along with a CCF egg crate type foam behind the speakers. Then because the plastic frames were impossible to cover with CLD or anything else I picked up some sheet metal that's a little thinner than the door itself and skinned it over the plastic frame. I applied CLD and CCF to that and then mounted the baffle to the door and installed the mids. I mounted the tweeters up on the dash as far forward as I physically could. Everything is in phase and like I said before, I got really lucky it all sounds as good as it does. The description of that van seems as though it should definitely sound good. That guy definitely has skills that I sure don't possess. On top of that, when I did the original build in the van we hadn't had it that long and my wife didn't want it to be heavily modified so I did as much as I could to make her happy and make it still retain the stock look. Of course that went out the window as the build's progressed but that's how it started out. I'll hunt through all of my pics and see if I can find ANYTHING of the doors behind the door panels. I just realized you said videos too, LOL. I can't believe those shitty ass videos are still up!

I'm starting cheap and moving up. The FE85 was almost 1/3 the price of the FR88EX so that's why I went that route. I've read a lot about the FR88 and if it works out I'll probably get around to playing with a set eventually due to the outstanding reviews it's gotten. The only thing I knew about the Faital's going into it was that Sean seems to think a lot of the brand and they were about the same price as the FE85's. I studied the specs, response and impedance curves on it before purchasing it and it looked to me like a great candidate. Initial listening it seems pretty damn nice, I'll post more about it as I play with it more.

bored with a little time to spare at work.....