on my ride home tonight my subwoofer or what i believe was my subwoofer was giving off a terrible smell... this is the first time it happened and it started to stink up the whole car .... is this common? is there something wrong? or is there any information someone can give me? my sub is a 12 inch pioneer premier, power acoustik amp .. alpine head unit and bose speakers just fyi. thanks.

 

Are you over powering it?

My previous sub started doing that because I was giving it WAY TOO much power.

 

either excess glue burning off the VC...or you fried your sub.

 

happened to my ID max's....time for a recone =/ cost more to ship the suckers than it was to fix.

 

well the thing is the sub still works... and i keep my bass level on -2... do you think this couldve been because i was playing a song that had a tremendous amount of bass... because the specific song i played was definitely one of the most bass filled songs ive played on it... or did i totally screw the sub up?

 

does it sound exactly the same as before? is it a DVC sub? bass on -2=gain up too high.

 

The smell is too much power going to the sub.

 

the smell is most likely caused by the VC receiving too much juice from the amp. If the gains are turned way up then your amp would go into clipping and you could be feeding your sub dirty power which could fry the VC.

 

It doesn't necessarly mean that the sub is damged, it does mean that the VC got very hot, just don't play it that loud again. If it sounds the same just leave it alone and don't worry about it until it stops working.

 

the VCs got a bit hot there eh?

recheck gain settings.

 

what would be a normal level to keep it at with my setup do you guys think... i wsa playing around with the settings yesterday maybe i turned something up too high? once adjusted will this smell stop because its almost unbareable... i guess im lucky considering no known damaged has been done... any input on normal levels to put my settings on would be great.

 

there's no predetermined "normal" level since it varies from each setup. but here's a common method. turn bass boost off. set your head unit's eq to where you would like it to. turn it up to 75% volume. then on the amp, slowly turn the gain up until you hear distortion, then turn back a little bit so that the distortion is gone.

the other method utilizes a digital voltmeter to set your gain.
http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/f...showtopic=3704

 

is the box ported if so ya might be have it playin to low for what its tuned to.or i might have the whole concept of a tuned box wrong

 

the sub can play below tuning, but it can easily bottom out/reach mechanical limits. the sub loses the "spring action" of the air inside the box below tuning, and is essentially playing free air.

 

which would normally result in a nice thud or thunk thunk thunk as it smashes itself flat.

 

Does your amp have a subsonic filter? If not then your sub might fry pretty quickly if your sending it lots of power and playing very low frequencies.

 

check your top lip LOL

Seriously, sounds like your overpowering it and heading for fried VC's soon.

 

My subs smell like fresh roses.

 

ok guys after a bunch of driving today and lots of sub bumping the smell hasnt returned i turned down the amp's levels a bit and everything seems alright and playing normal... now if only i could get the other smell out of my car... lol

 

If you stop farting in it the "other" smell will be gone... I'm sure.

 

maybe your right... ha

 

Get an odor neutralizer. Or just spray febreeze all over.

 

next time that happens, i bet the center of the woofer cone will be burning hot.

 

i gotta find this one picture of an abused sound splinter RL-i. the damn former caused a slight indentation on the aluminum cone. you can see a circle where a dustcap would be.

 

my old sub smelled like burning wood

 

Why am I not surprised, Avi?

 

If the box is ported, just put a bunch of air fresheners in the port, turn the gain back up, and call it a day. JK, LOL.

When my eclipse aluminum sub blew up because it bottomed out on a daily basis, the VC completely seperated from the spyder and the cone at the same time, which, in turn, also disconnected the tinsles from the voice coil since the tinsles are woven into the spyder. The sub imediately stop playing and there was no resistance when I tested it. I ripped the sub apart and the aluminum cone was dented and the VC was BLACK (got really hot). LOL. I couldn't hear it bottoming out because it was in a bandpass box.

 

lol wow. thank god you mentioned bandpass or I was going to say you are deaf. sounds like you raped that sub.