FIRST inspired subwoofer box... pics finally released!!

[Elgin Clock]

Hello,

As some of you know, I made an inquiry to the ChiefDelphi community a few (ok, so, more than a few) months ago about what kind of amplifier to use on a very unusual speaker box setup... (Subwoofer box, but let's not get technical here)

Anyways, I have not finished it yet, but finally did get a chance to take a picture of it.

While it is not as complete as I originally envisioned the project to be, it does work and it is installed in my car. (And it only takes up half the trunk!! lol

(You have to click on the picture to see the full size version now with this new forum set-up I guess... So click it!!!)

[Joe Matt]

Wicked. The only problem: you need to paint them red, white and blue!

[Wetzel]

Hey Elgin, they arn't properly overlaped.



Care to share specs of the diffrent subs? I saw that you havn't finnished it yet, but have you powered them up? If so, how does it sound with the three diffrent shaped/Brand subs?


Wetzel

[Andrew Rudolph]

sweeet its about time some pics got up!! If your bored geeks like us love to look at technical stuff

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

Hey Elgin, they arn't properly overlaped.

Care to share specs of the diffrent subs? I saw that you havn't finnished it yet, but have you powered them up? If so, how does it sound with the three diffrent shaped/Brand subs?
Wetzel

They were GOING to be overlaped, or a little farther apart so I could make a border around them, till I realised one little important detail... It wouldn't fit in my trunk between the wheel wells ith that design.. oops!!!

As for specs.. they are all 10" subs.

The triangle one is a bazooka, the round one is a sony explod, and the sqare one is an Alpha Sound sub.. (no, I wasn't going to spend 250.00 on a kicker solobaric square sub.. so off to e-bay I went.. lol)

As for the power, I probably did that wrong.. lol
I was fortunate to start off with a head unit that has 3 preamp outputs, so I wired one set to the Bass output and the other set to the regular channel output..
The amp is a 1200W AKAI amp. It is a four channel amp, and I have one sub on each channel, with one channel left over. I may eventually try to wire the whole system into the Bass preamp output control on the head unit because as of now, I have to crank the volume to get any bass, and that offers chance to blow my other speakers (knock on wood.. lol)

The reason I want to redo the wiring is that you would think since I do have 3 subs that I would get very deep amount, or a lot of bass... but it is just not working out that way unfortunately..

The problem I had with this system if you remember from my original post, was that one sub is 400W, one is 600W, and the other is 800W. (Umm.. yeah...)
So.. in other words.. I have no idea how much power is truely going thru each sub because of the whole different Wattage thing...

As for the sound, it is ok till I hit an extremely low bass note and then it kicks out on me (I was told I need a cap )

As for the speakers working together, they seem to work together very nicely, except for the fact that they are all in one enclosed area, and obviously the frequency bands are different, so when I crank it, one of the subs rattles.. (or maybe they all rattle.. lol)

What I really want to do, now that I have a bit of experience with speaker box building is to dissasemble the whole box, and make the same overall shaped box, but make each sub have it's own chamber.. right now, I have all 3 subs in one chamber - an open box inside, but I did add like 3 huge bags of poly-fill stuffing to slow down the bass waves. (I don't know.. it seemed to help a bit lol)

If you have any suggestions, I'm open for them and also some comments..

[Andrew Rudolph]

You should definetly redo the box using separate chambers, also you should be using 3/4"MDF and liquid nail, dont put screws into the box, and seal the whole thing off with silicone caulking (or somthing simmilar) to make sure the box doesnt leak. You should try to see if you can wire the speakers to different resistances (if they are dual voice coils) then you could match the wattages better (making the 400w sub 1 ohm while making the 800w 2ohm for instance) but definetly you should make each speaker in a separate chamber. really its the only way to get good sound. You still wont get AS great of sound as if you were using 3 perfectly matched speakers but thats ok. You should get grilles for all the speakers and paint them the red white and blue colors. Maybe when you cover the box (if you do at all) put FIRST under the speakers or make a nice little lexan beauty panel to cover everything. Maybe you could make the boxes in a sort of semi circle (more like a pentagon with one side chopped off) To make it fit and still look/sound good. PM or IM me if you want to talk more or i can send you pics of some boxes i have made.

[charlie_grr]

very very very very cool. i think you should try and get the triangle circle and square in the proper red white and blue colors. that would make it super geeky yet super cool.

[Yan Wang]

That's very bootleg. Good job.

May the subwoofers of FIRST shake your car like the snows of Ithaca.