AJbaseBloke

G'day gents (and all the ladies!!), gods of sound,

I've a mate who is running a new STI, he has a nice ICE set up, but needs a sub. Now, he is not a after a thumper to wake the neighbourhood with, but something to add some nice, rich bass for the occupants.

Ideally he'd like to put a small one in the rear deck (a la the B4's McIntosh set-up).

Anyone done it? Got some ideas?

Huge thanks in advance...

chiark

Hi Anton

There's a couple of approaches you could take here, with pros and cons for each way:

1 - take 1 or 2 8 inch subs, designed for "infinite baffle" use, cut a hole in the metalwork of the parcel shelf, enlarging the original speaker mounts. This will give you a surprisingly good result BUT at the expense of potentially weakening your rear bulkhead. I wouldn't go for this route.

2 - Get a pair of 6x9s and fit in the original holes. Filter out the top end frequencies with a capacitor. Cheap, cheerful, gives a more bass than before but doesn't quite provide the low down hit of a sub.

3 - Remove the rear speakers, and build a small box to house an appropriate 8" sub (or two) and hang this underneath the parcel shelf. With a little bit of ingenuity, which I'm sure you can find at Autobacs, etc , this could work brilliantly. Perhaps a bandpass box would work well? I'm sure that people near you will have done this successfully.

When I say "appropriate" 8" sub, I mean one whose parameters match the box that you intend to use. I'm sorely tempted to go this route and gain some bootspace back, or possibly just be done with it and use a single 15" sub.

I'd go for option 3 if you've got the local knowledge to design and build the box, or option 2 if you want a quick and dirty solution. Option 1 is one that I'd be wary of as I wouldn't advise you to do anything that could compromise the mechanical structure of the car.

Hope you got back home hassle free the other week.

Cheers,

Nick.

AJbaseBloke

Nick,

Thanks for that. Will go off and do some research on #2 + 3.

Your 6 x 9 comment makes me wonder if a McIntosh sub a la my B4's might not drop right in... A few calls to a wrecker may be happening.

He's got 16cm Carrozerias in front (with tweeters on the dash) and co-axials in the rear doors now, so the parcel shelf is free. He also has the highest tech ICE I have ever seen - all in one DVD sat nav/audio and TV!! Only thing he can't do is play DVD movies...

It doesn't half sound good already, but really needs a sub to fill it all out. And did I mention his car goes rather quickly?

Thanks a ton for the info m8, and hope your TV is all sorted now. Come visit us if you want to see all the toys!!

Cheers.