Let me start by saying hi to everyone. I've been lurking here for a while, reading all I can, and feeding my addiction to car audio. I'm 39 years old, and have been out of the car audio scene for many years, but I did play around with it enough to know that I love it when I was in my teens/early twenties. I even cut the cab out (a "blowthrough" by today's terminology) in my '82 Chevy pickup, and built a huge box for four Kicker C15s, which were top-end back in the day. And yes, it was loud. How loud? I don't know really......termlabs were years off! Anyway, I really could use some help here. My son (who is 13) and I are building a 16 ft3 wall (haven't built the port yet) in our '91 Civic, and want to use four 15s in it. We want decent subs, but need to stay around $1,000 or so for all four. I've been shopping around and have narrowed my choices down to either Alpine Type R's (which I can order online for just under $200 each), or Digital Designs 1515's (which I can get locally for $240 each). Now I know DD stuff is awesome, but these are the cheapest 15's they make. They claim less power handling than the Alpines. We're planning to use 4 Audiopipe AP15001D amps, hopefully having more than enough power, so we don't have to stress the amps to make the subs do their thing (hoping to get "clean" watts). I'd love to hear from those that have heard these subs, as I haven't heard either brand, ever. I'd also like to support my local shop, but I also want the most for my money here. Will the Alpines take more power than the DD's like they claim? I'm also open to other suggestions as to what subs to use in my price range. Any help is greatly appreciated.
without a doubt you guys are going for max boom. I also am an old school spl guy, as are Ranger and a few others. With 16 cubic feet we need to look into what drivers are best suited. Dont just look at the popular brands. If you want maximum ground punding look also at sensitivity and how 4 drivers will interact with the volume of air you have. Even expensive drivers in the wrong box will yield poor results. A civic with 4 fifteens? OUCH! thats gunna be painful! Did several small cars years ago like that. Generally speaking, with enough power whatever you do will rip your face off!
WOW.........those are impressive. Especially the small ones. I'll definitely consider them. I'm really interested in the DD 1515's, since they are sold locally, and built near me, but I can't find much info on them online, and I don't know anyone that has them. If I thought that the 1500 series could take the kind of power that the Sundowns do, I'd have no problem using them. Thanks Viking. You are right, max boom is the goal, but we'd also like to compete locally with it, so we want to be concious of tips and tricks to impress the meter as well. I saw a thread recently of a build by Ranger SVO where he built a wall in a car like ours, and stuck 4 12's in it, and could burp a 159. Link: http://www.caraudiotalk.com/audio-forum/showthread.php?t=3334 I'm hoping to gain some knowledge here and use it to my advantage. My son and I have talked about it, and if we can do a 150 and still have our music, we'll be pretty happy. Anything above that is just a bonus. I forgot to add that we have a 190 amp alternator waiting for me to install it, as well as a 50 ft. roll of 1/0 wire ready to be used. We will have 1 battery up front, and 2 in back. Hopefully, this will be enough to feed the hungry amps.
2 batts in back for 4 1500 wat amps is not enough... try 6 or more. i have a friend with 4 15's in a geo metro on 2 AP3k's doing 150s ,and he has at least 7 batts buried somewhere in that car. more batts are in order.
http://www.audioque.com/Street-Duty-SDC25-15-D4-Subwoofer_p_12.html I've heard good things about these.Caraudioking likes these Audiopipe subs: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350356077410#vi-content I have a single type r 15 in a '99 grand prix.My box is 3.34 cubes tuned to 32.5 hz and it slams pretty hard.
Thanks for the replies, fellas. I went down to the local shop and got to demo an S-10 ext. cab with 4 DD 3510's on 5000 watts (DD amps, I'm not sure of the models). I've never heard 10's sound anywhere near that loud. So, in an effort to support the local audio shop, and since the owner really does know what he's doing (he has competed in db drag, and done really well), and since I can tell the DD subs are on par with other subs in the price range, I've decided to get the 1515's. I like staying in good graces with the local guys, since we will probably be asking lots of questions during our quest for the ultimate bass this vehicle can offer (on our budget, of course).
That Honda has 2 boxes in it and of course two woofers per box. And if I remember right it had 4 batteries in the back of it. I also did a few others just like it. The design just worked well
Oh, was that two seperate boxes? You did an excellent job of making look like one "wall" box with all four subs in it. At any rate, ours will have four DD 1515's with a 8x27 slot port on the driver's side. We will be right at 16 cubic feet after all displacements, which, luckily, is exactly what DD recommends for these drivers (4 cubes each). Tuned to 38 hertz. We are over halfway done with the box now (yes, we are slow. I work all day and he goes to school, leaving only a couple hours in the evenings to work on it. And we are taking our time and enjoying it so it doesn't become like "work"......) Hoping to have it all in one piece sometime this weekend. We have two subs now, but need a little time to come up with the other two, as well as amps. We have our "big three" done, as well as one run of 1/0 to the back. We have the alt, just need to install it, and install a couple of batteries (new truck batteries that we have sitting around. Better than nothing). By the way, in the photos, there appears to be only two batteries in the back of the Civic you built. Will two be enough, or should we use more?
I had a dc power 300 amp, 3 xs power d3100s and 4 sundown 1500s at .5 each and i dropped to like 12.5 volts full tilt. So i would say at least 3 batteries.
Definately two batteries. Its this one that has four Anyway, two batteries would be OK as long as your not driving around at full volume all day. But four might be a better idea. Seriously, the SI (square woofers) was no where near as loud as the DX. The SI had twice the power and a lot more square inches. The SI could pull down around a 151 to 152. The Hatchback DX could cosistantly pull of a 158, and a bit better once in a great while.
Gotcha. Most of the pics wouldn't load for me in the original thread, so I only had a handful to look at, and I think all of them were of the DX. Which is cool, because that's what I'm working on.
I'm reviving this thread because I really need some ideas here. It seems that our goal has changed a bit: we started out just wanting to be loud. Well, we are able to play music well over 150 db and can burp close to 155. We have 4 DD 1515s and 2 AQ2200s. We clamp just under 4000 watts on burps, which is perfect for the 4000 watt power class we compete in. So the new goal is to rebuild the box to burp as loud as possible. Can Ranger's theory be used with 4 15s? Or do we need smaller subs to allow a larger port opening? Any help is greatly appreciated.
