I bought this sub for quality not loudness. It is 2 ohm dual voice coil. I have no need to break windows, set off car alarms, or blow people's hair around. I definitely will crank it up occasionaly but keeping the quality over quantity mantra in mind would it be possible to run a ~300W-500W RMS amp with this sub?
The rest of my system will remain largely factory (mercedes bose system is a PITA to exorcise) except I am changing some of the speakers with ones designed to work with the factory system.
I like the old A/D/S amps a lot but the ones I have see only go up to 400W-600W. The alternator + battery in my car are pretty stout. Is it common with a 1000W + sub e.g. Orion 1200D to get a bigger alternator? If I run both coils at two ohms any mono amp would have to be 1 ohm stable. If the XXX must have high power then I will go ahead and do it but I would prefer a really high quality lower power amp. So 1. is it possible to get excellent, medium volume, sound out of a 400W - 800W RMS amp? 2. what amp do you suggest? I have never heard quite a few of the brands that people suggest for this sub e.g. zapco, xtant, orion but I have found that there is a night and day difference between really good amps and the common lines of name brand amps.
Also is it best to build a box for this sub? I see designs on the resonant engineering site. I wanted to just go buy a box but oh well.
with that sub you're going to want to look at giving it at least 800 watts RMS minimum. It's a very inefficient sub due to the motor design, but it's designed to be highly linear at high excursion.
you won't get much out of it with 300 watts. build the box or have it built for that sub. due to the weight alone it'll require a doubled front baffle, and reinforced interior.
The amp puts out 1000W at 1ohm as well according to the brochure. Well I got a box that was custom made for the triple XXX 12" according to the specs on the RE website. Now I just need the amp. I have a wiring harness coming that will hopefully plug in and give me the low level outputs to the factory sub amp in RCA form so that I can plug an aftermarket amp into the factory system. There is a special high output (liquid gel I think) mercedes battery right below where the amp will be so I may be able to get away without further mods to the elictrical system. I should probably wait for this harness but ...