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I've decided to upgrade the stereo

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14 November 2003
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At the epicenter of the Zombie Apocalypse
Instead of sending the Bose crap out to be fixed only to fry again in the near future I've decided to upgrade. I visited several places in the Boca Raton/Palm Beach area and I'm going to have Sound Advice in Boca install the following:

JL Audio XR-650CXi Coaxials in the doors.
JL Audio 6 W0 6" sub in the passenger footwell
JL Audio 300/4 Power amp will go in the trunk.
The is rated at 75 Watts RMS per channel. Since it is a 4 channel amp the remaining 2 channels will be bridged providing 150 watts to the sub.

Any comments pro or con would be appreciated. I'm scheduled to have this done in 10 days or so.

Thanks,
Hugh
 
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You might consider a bigger sub - you can easily accommodate an 8" in there with no compromise in space & if you find the right 10", it is also possible (probably not a JL though)
If you want to stay w/in the JL family, the 8W3V2 only has a 4.3" mounting depth & I think you'd be happier with that than the 6.5"
 
If there's room for an 8" then I have no problem with it. :)

Are you recommending the 8W3V2 over the 8W0 because of the former's dual voice coil design or is it simply a better performing speaker overall?

Thanks,
Hugh
 
A custom enclosure is going to be built for it so it fits in the original location in the passenger footwell. The shop will most likely use fiberglass to construct a sealed enclosure.
 
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Hugh said:
Are you recommending the 8W3V2 over the 8W0 because of the former's dual voice coil design or is it simply a better performing speaker overall?
Both - but JL states for themselves pretty well:

from http://www.jlaudio.com/subwoofers/8w3v2.html

The 8W3v2 is a remarkable 8-inch subwoofer with very long excursion capability, designed to extract maximum performance from moderate power levels. This speaker works extremely well in very small sealed and ported enclosures while its dual voice coil design gives the user a high degree of application flexibility.
This pretty much sums it up - you will have a relatively small volume to work with utilizing an intermediate amp - this model shoud be an excellent complement.

Incidentally I have the JL VR-650 co-ax in my ZX300 fronts, driven by an Alpine head with integrated amplifier - those are a very decent sounding intermediate speaker & I'm sure the XR is even better if you choose to use a co-ax.
I don't know if they have Good Guys out your way, but their stores usually have good demo booth with JL components where you can listen to them. I would definitely recommend you try to get a first-hand listening experience rather than buying by specs.

Peiserg: as discussed in the the other thread, there is no after-market (true) subwoofer that will operate in the std. enclosure - a custom unit will be required. No way around that I'm afraid!
 
I did some poking around the JL website and I'm going to follow your advice D'Ecosse. I'm going with the 8W3v2 sub. Looks like I'll need the D4 version with the voice coils wired in series to provide an 8 ohm load to the amp. According the manual for the 300/4 amp when running in stereo/bridged mode and considering the XR650-CXi speakers are 4 ohms, this is the combination you want so the amp delivers it's full potential to all the speakers.
 
For a single sub, I would have though the D2 wired in series for 4ohms for best application in bridged o/p mode; Or you could run the D6 even at 3 ohms in parallel. However, you might consider to e-mail JL & ask them directly for their recommendation, based on your component choices - I'm sure they'll be glad to advise.
 
If you go to JL's site www.jlaudio.com and download the owner's manual for the 300/4 it lists optimum configurations. When running the amp with 2 75W channels with 4 ohm loads which I will be doing with the 650 speakers, the optimum setup for the other bridged channels is an 8 ohm load to get the full 150 watt output. It's actually a very thorough manual, I saved it as a .pdf file on the PC.

I just got back from Sound Advice and they don't have a 8W3v2-D4 in stock but there is a guy on eBay selling 2 of them new in the box for $95.00 each. I just nabbed one of them. If any of you want the other his auction listing is here.

I'll be running the dual voice coils in series to provide the required 8 ohm load to the amp.
 
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