Replacing Woofer in a Commercial Sub

[awtryau89]

I posted this on another forum and wanted to run it by those over here as well.

I have an Earthquake MKV-15 with a damaged woofer. My son and his friends accidently kicked it in while wrestling. I am not really a DIYer but before getting a replacement woofer from Earthquake, I was wondering if I might replace it with a better woofer and get better performance.

Most of you will know the sub as it is basically a 18" cube with the SLAPs passive radiator on one side with the active driver opposite. The amp is 600 watt digital amp and while removing the woofer, I noticed it has a very large torroid transformer in attached to the bottom of the cabinet.

The woofer in it now is the DBXi 15D. It is dual voice coil and looks as if it is wired + to + and - to -. Here are the specs from the EQ website:

Fs=20hz
Qes=1.14
Qms=5.99
Qts=.45
Xmax=3.5"/88.9
Effic=88db SPL
REVC=4ohm
BL=26.8TM
VAS=91.1 Lit/3.217 ftcubed
Nom Imp=Dual 4ohm
750watt/2000wattmax

I do know Earthquake tunes the SLAPs PR to 17hz but I do not know much more than that.

I guess I am looking to improve performance if I can and I might consider bracing the box a tad bit more or doing a some small cabinet improvements. I hope you guys on here can help. Fire away!!!

[Geoff St. Germain]

The T/S specs are slightly wrong, specifically the Q values. I assume that Qts is supposed to be 0.95. Anyway, the first thing to find out is how much the replacement woofer actually costs. Looking at Earthquake's stuff it seems to be of good quality.

I'd really lean toward replacing the driver with a proper replacement from Earthquake unless they want a ridiculous amount of money for it.

[Mike P.]

I agree with Geoff. The Earthquake subs have a excellent reputation, and the MKV-15 driver was designed to work with that specific amplifier, passive radiator and box size. My first choice would be to replace the sub with a replacement from Earthquake, if the price is reasonable.

[awtryau89]

Thanks guys. I was leaning that way originally and wanted to make sure I did not miss out on anything. The woofer is $399 and they told me they would cut me a better deal than that but we did not talk exact prices yet. How does that sound to you guys?

Also, they told me the woofer is unique to me in that is uses a new surround. It is eliptical instead of round and sticks out over an inch from the basket. It is weird looking.

I did some searching while I was at it and if Earthquake is not lying about their specs, there are not many other woofers out there at this price that can match it.

[Ricci]

I agree with everyone else that you should go with the factory replacement. Those Earthquake 15's are supposed to be a pretty good sub from what I've read and being a really small PR system everything is going to be very dependant upon the other components for optimum performance. Changing one of them is probably going to hurt instead of help.