Soundstream Subwoofer for £3..

[Beddo88]

Acquired myself quite the ebay bargain a few weeks ago, but never got round to checking what the model the thing actually was. (wasnt advertised on the sale)

Having just taken it apart, its a Soundstream Rubicon 12. Sadly i cant find any specification information on this online anywhere :( Its the earlier model, not the newest version.

Any of them *ahem* older ICE heads know what sort of power ratings these should be run with? I've found information suggesting both 250W RMS and Peak online. Need to know before i source myself an amp!

[Jay4424]

Two seconds on google...


http://www.soundstream.com/manuals/RUBI ... Manual.doc


Jay.

[Beddo88]

Thats a spec sheet for the new one :( Thats the problem i was having.. the one i have is from the original company, who it would appear were taken over and have no info on previous stock. Which is annoying. Have found other evidence online now for 250W RMS. so i'll go with that and hope for the best!! Cheers for looking though! :)

[Nate]

an 500W RMs amp running at half power will give you much better sound than a 250W one running flat out. don't worry about the power rating being too high, just make damn sure that nothing is distorting and you'll be fine

[fonzooorooo]

What Nate said. (makes a change, eh?!)

It's all about headroom with bass - underpowering speakers is what kills them - the amp clips, and you don't hear it till it's too late. If you get an amp that's "too loud" for the speaker, it'll deliver clean power to it, and you'll hear the speaker distorting when it's at it's limit... That's when you turn the amp down!

An aside: 250 RMS in a car is MASSIVELY loud. It's generally thought that for bass guitar, you only need a 300W RMS amp for pub/club gigs without putting it through the PA... Admittedly, PA/instrument speakers are usually more efficient, so less power is wasted, but as you can only ever sit about 6 feet away from the speaker in the car, it hardly matters!

Where comments about watts RMS fall down is that they can still be measured differently - % distortion at x Hz... A speaker that'll deliver 250W at 0.01% distortion across the frequency spectrum will go MUCH, MUCH louder than one which will deliver 250W at 10% distortion when playing a pure sine wave at 1 KHz... That's what the manufacturers don't like to tell you... All that is why the "get an amp that's too big, and you'll hear the driver distort when it's too loud" logic works so well.

Lecture over.

[Beddo88]

I see.. so it really is another case of bigger truly is better? From what i've read it is (or was) a pretty good sub when it was first made, and quite a few people still seem to rate them highly. So i'm happy.. i'll just have to hunt down something suitable to power it!

Then get some door cards and components...re-wire the lot of them and hey presto! One job to tick off the list

[fonzooorooo]

I've never tried it, but if you're swapping from decent 4x6"s to components, the idea of chopping the wiring to the internal tweeter (or de-soldering the capacitor from it - same difference) then running crossovers and seperate tweeters positioned properly ocurred to me. That way, you could keep the standard door cards/speaker pods, and just pop a hole somewhere suitable for the tweeter. The cone area of a 4x6" is smaller than you'd probably be going for with components, so it wouldn't get rid of that "shouty" quality that the4x6"s tend to have, but it'd brighten the sound at the front of the car and improve imaging. Just a thought. And I'll repeat that I've never tried it. If you'd got a way of trying it on the cheap though, it could be interesting!

Of course, if you've got standard/nasty 4x6"s, you've just wasted your time reading that lot - it'd work out dearer than the components if buying the 4x6"s as well...

[Beddo88]

I've got a pair of the jbl 4x6s, which in themsevles arent bad, but are currently both sat at the rear of the car. (the fronts wiring is earthing on one side, and both the front speakers were originals and shagged) And being a bit of a bass man, you get alot more bass with them sat over the boot, albeit of poor quality

Does anyone do vw specific door cards etc? Or is this gunna end up as a custom build?

[fonzooorooo]

why not pop your existing jbls into the front, with new cables, then, assuming your shelf's cut for the 4x6"s, enlarge the cutouts for 6x9"s in the rear (or 8" or something - anything bigger - more cone area= bigger bass)

If you can live with the (bigger)rear speakers in the shelf, you'll probably get them crossing over lower to the sub, which'll get rid of a "hole" you tend to end up with in the upper bass register when crossing over from 4x6"s to a sub.

[Beddo88]

I've only got the standard 4 x (4x6)setup, so the two cutouts for the 4x6s are set into the metal either side of the rear shelf. Not sure those would accomodate anythign much bigger?!

Either way, i'd rather have some components up front on the basis it should give better sound quality. That and they jut seem to out perform co-axials at every turn. And they just look cooler...