sub amp question (1 Viewer)

[GrahamT]

I am building a DIY Tempest. I have the sealed box (Q of 0.66), and am receiving the Tempest next week. I also have a sony sawm500 that I dont need anymore. Can I use the Tempest with the sony amp?

The amp was originally designed to be used in a ported enclosure tuned probably to 30 Hz or so, is there a subsonic filter or something in the amp to protect the driver below this freq?

THe specs say 20-200Hz at 150w into 6ohms at 0.7%thd. Is there a bass boost type system in the amp to make it artificially high in the 30-50 Hz region?

Thank you for any help you can give me.

 

[David Giesbrecht]

I wouldn't use that amp if there is a 30 hz cut built on you will lose your subsonics (not good) if you put a boost on it at that frequency it will sound very boomy and will cause your amp to clip really bad plus 150 watts isn't really enough for a tempest in the first place.

 

[Ryan Schnacke]

I've always been of the opinion that if you already have the stuff and it won't cost you anything (but time) then go ahead and experiment.

In order for this to really be free you'll need to:
1)Get to the speaker leads of the amp without permenantly damaging the Sony sub
2)Build the new sub as a passive sub and external amp. If you mount the Sony amp and it doesn't work well, then your amp opening might not fit whichever plate amp you choose to replace it.

If you can manage these then I say why not? I've heard of a few folks running SVS CS subs with only 150 watts or so with great success. The Tempest should be even more sensitive. Plus, running at a 4 ohm load the amp should put out a little more power. Still, you might go easy until you find out if that amp is happy with a 4 ohm load.

If you can burn CD's and have access to a multimeter then you could plot the response curve of the amp and find out exactly what it does. Do a search and you'll probably find several pages that describe how to do this. Use the NCH waveform generator to make pure tones at any frequency.

 

[GrahamT]

Thanks very much for the opinions and help guys. I already have the amp attached externally (no big hole) to the new box and I will run the test tones and plot the response when I get the Tempest.
I was just wondering if anyone knew if the was some sort of subsonic filter on the sub or some other form of protection for the driver built into the amp. Sony doesn't mention this but I didn't know if it was common on cheap commercial subs. Any other help would be greatly appreciated.