Alright so I have this fantasy with the trunk of my xB.

Two 10' subs and a 12' sub in a customized case. Kind of so there is a 10' on either side of the 12'.

Early today my 12 xplod blew on me. All of a sudden the bass died and there was some smoke coming out of the enclosure. I still have the 800W sony xplod Amp though.

I was looking on www.onlinecarstereo.com and I found some cheap kenwood 10' and some not so bad 12's I have my eye on.

As far as amps and wiring go.. What do I need? I'm a broke college kid so I'm looking for the most affordable way possible.

 

Just a little heads up. The biggest mistake people do on their amp wiring is to use a low (thick) wire for the power and not matching the ground. Use the same size wire for both ground and power.

 

I'm not trying to overstep here, but I'm confused as to why you have two different cone sizes. You would have been better off going with two 12s or two 10s by themselves rather than the mix you have. Two speakers designed with the specific notion to produce lower tones of the same frequency could produce a warbling effect on a single note. If you are in to sound quality at all, this is definitely not the best method to use.

What I would recommend doing… ditch the 10s along with the amp and sub enclosure. Build new with the intention of building efficient and cheap at the same time. A single 12 (I’d recommend ED, cheap and very good quality/service) setup ported with a low tuning (34 to 38Hz). Pair that up with a decent/modest amplifier that isn’t starving for more juice than what the sub needs. From there, peak your amp correctly and don’t overgain. A well tuned setup with the right speaker in a well made box can output extremely well. I’m going to take a stab at the dark and say your mixed bag sub enclosure all used a sealed setup. I’m sure you could sell your used equipment for enough to get the single ED as well as the materials needed for the new box. You may even have enough left over to cover half the cost of a good amp.

 

x2! Great bang for the buck!

Robert

 

Correct.

The reason is because you can never get them to work well together. There's no way to tune them such that their frequency response and amplitude will be the same, which is what'd be required for SQ. Because of that the output of the system would be VERY uneven, their output would combine at certain frequencies (causing exaggerated "boomy" bass), while canceling each other out at other frequencies (causing drop-outs, lack of bass), primarily due to phase anomalies.

Mixing different size subs in the same system = Bad Idea!

EDIT: I should qualify that statement by adding it's a bad idea when they're covering the same frequency range. Different size subs can be made to work well together if their response doesn't overlap, such as running a 12" below 40Hz and a 10" from 40-80Hz. However, in that scenario only the 12" would technically be a sub-woofer, the 10" would be used as a mid-bass.

 

Alright cool. The amp I have is a Sony Xplod ZR Series 2, and I'm going to try to go with double 12's. Should I keep the amp and try to figure out something compatible or start over?

 

Start with the subs you want to run. Then figure out the amp that will work best for the subs for the box you build. The amp is always the last element of the equation in my opinion. The only part of the amp section that comes before the subs is how much power you are looking to push per sub. Just keep in mind that two 10s in the right box can easily out perform two 12s in a crappy box.

 

We were gonna fight.. I run 2 8's and 2 12's in different ranges

 

^ LOL, thought that might happen, figured there had to be someone here running a mid-bass setup, so I made sure to quantify the statement just for you!

 

3 JL Audio 12w6s (old school with the dual 6-ohm voice coils) and a Precision Power a1200.2