Under Seat Subwoofer Club (USSC)

How do they sound with the back seats down? Thanks

 

No difference in the sound when the seats are down. Consider that almost every other subwoofer setup you've ever heard is in the trunk, a completely separate cabin, with a wall between you and the subs. At least with this under seat setup it's in the same airspace as the cab. The seats being on top are just in the way.

 

ahh, Elemental Designs. they made good stuff till they ripped people off

 

Wait what?

 

For shizzle....Ben (owner of that company) screwed a lot of people at some point. They tried to do it to me once too but I was persistent because my amp was under warranty. Still good shit but the way that company was run was total garbage. I still have a 13Ov2 of theirs sitting in the closet looking for a home. Great subwoofer. Had a Nine.5 amp from them I ran for a while too.

 

Damn, I had no idea.

 

I have a 10" sub that needs a home in the truck.

Wonder if this would be the spot.
@manethon Any thoughts on this?

 

Do they have a setup where you can use a knob and kill all the subs like let's say if the babies in the truck? Also what's recommended for all new inside speakers plus 2 8"s?

 

i highly doubt it would fit under the seat mate. Id recommend you build a 1.25 CF 31-35hz tuned ported box for behind the seat and toss a good 800WRMS at it

 

A lot of amps allow you to use a "gain knob" for doing exactly that. You run the wire up to the dash from the amp and it gives you the ability to vary the gain on the amp from up front. Just turn it all the way down when you have kids in the car. Crank it up when they're not!

Agreed. Good advice. The space below the seats is only good for just shy of 1 cubic foot. Porting reduces that volume further. I know from experience.

 

Has anyone had both style setups under seat and behind seat in a DC 2nd Gen? I eventually want to install/upgrade factory components and I'm pretty excited as this is the first vehicle I've had since my last two that I can actually do an easy sub setup.

Behind seat I would use passenger side and prolly go 12" or a real good solid 10". Under seat I have no clue as I've never used 8" subs before, I'm used to loud loose bass coming from a band pass or sealed enclosure in a trunk with 12 or 15s. Hoping to still have loud but tight bass!

 

A single 12" sub behind the seat will walk all over a dual 8" sealed setup under the seats. You have to view the under seat setup for what it is; a convenient and neat compromise to losing all your easily accessible storage but still having bass. The two sealed 8s is plenty of bass for me. I really enjoy it. However, having designed plenty of 12" sub boxes I know for a fact it will be better. Better still would be a properly designed 10" in a ported box. In my honest opinion, that's the sweet spot. My justifications are below...

A larger sub with the same design as it's smaller sibling (aka: a 12 and a 10 of the same design) will require more airspace to work well; end of story. Thus, unless you plan to give up the ENTIRE rear bin area behind the seats you're left with a quandry. Do you give up a ton of space for a ported box or do you go with the smaller subwoofer? The answer is simple, you run a 10" subwoofer in a ported box. A ported 10 will easily outperform his 12" brother in a sealed box. Why? The answer is math. The port tuning (if done right) allows you to control the movement of the subwoofer at a CRITICAL frequency range; right around 32hz. That's right around where the hard hitting bass we like typically is centered. This is why most boxes are tuned close to that frequency. So you tune your box to that point and you get nice tight bass but you'll also see anywhere from 3-9db of additional output at that range.

Just to give you an idea of what that means...to achieve a 9db output gain you'll need 800% more power. Meaning a to make a sealed subwoofer on 500 watts gain 9db in output you'll need to give it 4000watts; which it isn't likely to handle. Or you could just enlarge the box slightly and cut a well tuned hole in it for FREE which actually increases power handling too. This is why the 10" system is better. Slightly smaller box requirements than the 12" sub which allows you to squeeze a ported box back there with a MUCH flatter response curve on less power.

BOOM....done.

*this post assumes you only want to relinquish the smaller of the rear bin storage.

 

You have my attention

Does someone make a 10inch ported box for the driver side cubby? Just have to move my compressor if that happens

 

I believe at one time Mr. Marv made one. But now....good question. I know Taco tunes still makes one but it's sealed. This one from SuperCrew Sounds seems good but it too is sealed. I'm betting you could ask them to custom vent one for you though. Either that or add your own. They have an option for a 6" depth which you'll likely need for many good subs.
http://www.supercrewsound.com/05tacomadblsingle.html

Something like this Fi Car Audio SSD10 would work well in there assuming you can adequately tune the box without losing a ton of volume. I'd also check with Fi to make sure the magnet is less than 6" across since SuperCrew Sound states it must be.
http://www.ficaraudio.com/product/ssd-series-ssd10/

 

Thank you for the descriptive post! I have dabbled with systems since I was in highschool, installed in my own vehicles and have done friends setups along with a very nice (and my first) semi-custom install in my sisters old G6. That setup was probably the hardest hitting one I have ever done but I screwed up when purchasing the sub/amp combo and fudged on my ohm config which basically left me with an underpowered sub. I guess my point is while I do know some about systems I have never been super technical with them.

This truck on the other hand I want to setup right and since I have the ability to do so with a proper sub setup I plan to be doing some reading up and asking more questions.

Now to the setup I am thinking about - Yes, I was going to go with the driver side cubby and take up the least room possible. Then the more I have thought about it I actually think it would be more beneficial to use the passenger side cubby and build a box that will allow my amps and capacitor to fit all in one space. I hate mounting amps under seats, it makes for a PITA install and is not very clean IMO on top of difficult to access the amp for tuning.

So as of right now I am down with a larger box for more airspace and cleaner install on the passenger side rear seat. From what I have seen so far speaker excursion seems to be difficult to manage with the limited space between the seat either folded or upright. This is something I want to find a better way to resolve outside of moving the seat forward a bit as some have done....Unfortunately I don't have my truck to be able to take measurements on and check things out. Not 24 hours after I drove my truck off the lot I wrecked the top of the cab on a low concrete cross beam I did not see and it is in the shop till end of November. For informative purposes I bought a 2015 DCSB

Edit: I apologize for bringing rear seat discussion to this thread. lol

 

Taco Tunes is someone I have looked at, I think the DS Cubby box they make is sealed though. Wouldn't be hard at all to add a port to it with a hole saw and a port cover. There is not much info on Taco Tunes products but what I have seen reviewed about them is positive and they do awkward video tutorials on youtube with chicks in bikinis...lol

 

Now that I'm closer to niagra I can start making boxes again to offer with our full packages. The self powered subs are taking a little longer than expected to come through but a single triton 10 ported on 500-1kw tuned 31-36hz will do the trick. Has the be passenger side though. I just got done testing our dsp when a new model arrived at my door so hold on. For sub amp, there is a wide range of amps that I'll pull from but most likely will be some very small footprint powerful amps!

 

As someone mentioned above, using the passenger side and the middle area rear seat cubby is a good idea too. WAY more volume for a larger ported box which will expand the number of subwoofers that you can use with good results. Efficient subwoofers like larger boxes. But yes, you could use that middle space to mount your amps or leave it blank for trail gear or other stuff.

As for me, I have my amp and DSP under the front seats.

 

Yes, Dsp and amps under the driver and passenger seats is solid. One series of amps i carry can fit 4kw @1 ohm under one seat. Im gonna see if the new 5kw will fit under as well.