Rockford Fosgate DIY HT Sub

[redracer054]

Hi,
I'm new to this site and I have a few questions regarding my homemade sub. I put together a sub using a Rockford Fosgate DVC "HE2" driver and a simple sealed box design. What I'm curious about is using an old receiver to power the unit. I have an older Onkyo TX-810 stereo receiver to power the thing. So first question: Do I wire each VC seperate for 4ohm operation, or do i wire it in series for 8ohm? 2nd question: To get the most power out of a stereo amp, do you connect both + output wires to the + box connection and both - wires to the other, or just use one of the two speaker outputs and turn the balance all the way to the right? Thanks for the help!

[aktiondan]

The safest way to wire it would be to run the coils in series for a single 8 ohm load and run it off one channel of your stereo receiver. Turning the balance to one side isn't really necessary, but would be fine if you wanted to. However, if you want more umph from that sub/receiver combo, you could wire one coil to each output from your receiver. However, this comes at a price, most receivers are not rated to deliver continuous power into a 4 ohm load and you could blow your receiver. Some amps spec 6 ohms, but most are 8 ohms and even fewer are 4, especially old ones like yours. Newer amps can run 4 ohms without any issues. I looked up your amp and couldn't find any specs on it other than it's got 65W per channel, without any mention of loads. However, I have got away with doing it both ways, coils in series to one channel, and one coil to each channel (not at the same time!) and it depends a lot on you and how bass heavy you play movies and music. If the amp has protective circuitry, the best thing that can happen is that cuts in and out over and over and is annoying. The worst thing that can happen is you fry the amp, and you're left with nothing.

I'm not sure of your (+) and (-) description, but from what it sounded like you said, the two (+)'s should not be connected together, ever. Same goes for the negatives (in most cases). One channel to each coil wired independently, or one channel to both coils in series. Hope that helps you out some!

[redracer054]

Hey, thanks. Yeah my question about the using both sides of the outputs was just wondering if I would be able to double the power output of the amp by using both speaker outputs into to the single stereo connection on the sub box that I built. If the load is on only half of the amp, doesn't that put too much strain on the receiver? I just thought it would be a shame to use a single speaker output when you have another ~65 watts at your disposal to run into the sub.