My buddy gave me a new bass CD today. So there I was driving home after work bumping it. This one song in particular hits REALLY LOW and I was playing it the second time in a row.

All of the sudden I smell a nasty burnt smell in the air! I turn around and look at my box and see SMOKE rising up and hitting the plexi-glass top! So i tuned my stereo off and drove the rest of the way home.

My question to you all is this... What was smoking? I cannot take my box apart without actually ripping off the plexi-glass. I looked through the top at the connectors on each sub and saw nothing melted at all.

I think it MIGHT be the speaker wire I have running to the subs, it is 16 guage wire I bought from Radio Shack. I have a JL 1000/1 mono amp, and 2 JL 10w3v3's in the box. Any ideas? Here is a picture of the top of the box...

 

voice coils. Time for new subs so you might as well blow them.

 

I am editing my reply after further review of the JL Audio website... if you look here: http://mobile.jlaudio.com/products_s...p?series_id=24
you can see that the subs are rated for 300 watts RMS, now my amp is only turned up about 1/3 of its power... how in the heck could my voice coils possibly be toast? Am I missing something here? I would figure that with it only turned up "about" a third of the way that there are no more than 400 watts MAX going thru them...

I am not claiming to know anything about amps or subs on this matter, this is only what I had perceived from what little knowledge I have on electronics.

 

its definitely the voicecoils. ive done it to a couple subs before. having the eq adjusted wrong or too much bass boost can send a clipped signal to the subs which causes them to overheat.

 

I'm assuming that that enclosure is ported. Iso-Bandpass design? Problem with that is it's really hard to tell what exactly you are doing with your subs. It's tuned to a specific frequency and playing some really low notes off a bass cd might not clue you in on what's happening with the speakers. I'd say you simply overworked the speaker. Having a sealed up box like that doesn't quite let the speaker cool the voice coils either. Maybe after playing these two songs they just overheated the coils and burned them selves up. Some of these cds simply have too long and too much bass. Doesn't give the speaker time to recover. That's where most of the big giant subwoofers shine because they put a lot of emphasis on the vented pole pieces and internal cooling of the speakers.

I speak with experience with this. My old 95 Mitsubishi Mirage was a sponsored Kicker demo car back in 95. I had four Kicker Comp 18s mounted isobaric in the rear of the car each running on it's own Kicker 500ss amplifier. The two exposed subs had gold plated baskets. Kicker used to offer plating your baskets back in the day. Anyways, at every show I was almost guaranteed to smoke a coil when I would do a long sweep notes. Starting up from the highest of high notes and sweeps all the way down to the lowest of low notes when the 18s would practically take your breath away. My entire roof would literally start to look like waves rolling through it...lol Sounded great until the coils would start to smoke towards the end of the day. Too many low notes and demos. After playing some long low bass songs you could almost burn your hand on the back of the speaker. Cooked the voice coil. Was funny to hear the fans gasp when the car would start to smoke from the speaker burning up.

I have some old VHS videos of the car that I need to transfer into digital. Back then it hit a 147 db which was pretty high in the 90s...lol Now the record is like 180.5 db now!!! Crazy.

 

that happened to me once, except it was the stereo in my bedroom, its the voicecoils

 

lol. I remember when I was a kid (well a smaller kid) my buddy and I used to tear apart old walkie talkies, headphones, anything we could get our hands on so that we could hook them up to my parents Fisher home stereo system. Dad had a pretty big amplifier on it and it would smoke the hell out of anything we put on it. Just something about burning up a speaker...lol Now I just plug them into the light socket and see how long until it fries!!!

 

lol nice, the sad part about my story is, the speakers were meant for car audio 6.5" and they smoked off an old philips radio in my room

 

well dammit! i did just go for another drive and they still sound fine. how much longer until they totally take a crap now? I just built this box 2 weeks ago...

So I guess it is time for an upgrade... Is there a single good sub that can handle about 2/3-3/4 of my amp and be in a ported box? I would love to just have one sub, makes making a box for my back seat much, much easier.

 

My old Audiobaun aluminum cone speaker would act funny one day and play fine for a week. Did this for nearly two years....lol Until finally I slammed my brakes on and my 19volt craftsman drill dill the speaker in...lol You might be good. Time will tell.

 

what amp do you have and what are the specs? what size sub you lookin for?

 

I have a JL Audio, 1000/1 mono amp. you can look up any specs you want on their site.

I like the setup I have now, so really nothing bigger than a 15, but a 12 would be preferable... Anything out there that can take a beating? Also NOT wanting to spend more than around $450, even that is pretty damn pricey.

 

alpine type x, fi ssd, kicker cvx, check out DC audio, TC sounds, FI, RE, memphis

 

you'll have a chore finding a speaker that will work fine with your amp and in your current enclosure. I'd say start from square one and find new subs that will work for you then build a new box.

You might want to look at Sound Splinter or Sundown Audio Nightshades. If I was looking for rumble that's the way I'd go.


Far as how long they will last since the magic smoke has been released is hard to tell. I know my coils are burnt too and they occasionally have that unique smell come out from time to time. But they still refuse to die and still sound great. So it's anyone's guess really.

 

Sorry, I should have explained better. I meant to say that I want to keep the same style of box, not THE same box. Where I have it is where I want to keep it.

There has to be a decently priced 12" that would love a ported environment and can handle 2/3 of my amp. I would love any input from people that have what I am looking for. I might just go with a JL 12W7. I have heard those bad boys will give you a heart attack!