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My latest audio project, building a subwoofer box to house a JL 10W6v3. I ordered a 10W6v3 sub that I'm still waiting on. Also waiting on carpeting to complete the box. Material is 3/4" birch plywood. I wasn't planning on doing it myself but figured what the hell. I never can seem to find anyone to do good work at a reasonable price so I decided to try and tackle this myself. The W6 will go in the center box with 2 storage cubbies on the sides. I used liquid nails and a bunch of screws to make it as solid as possible.
Internal air space is .75 cu. ft. while empty. The sub uses .08 cu ft of space, so the end result will be about .67 cu. ft. of air in the box which is a little more than what JL asks for. JL's specs ask for a box with .63 cu. ft. empty, which comes out to .55 cu. ft. with the sub installed.
This is the first time I have attempted to build a sub box, so hopefully the end results will be worth it. I enjoy seeing new threads in the audio section so I figured I would share in case anyone is interested. Feedback or suggestions are appreciated.
Last edited by TorchRedFred; Jul 29, 2018 at 09:28 PM.
Thanks. It still looks a little rough but getting it carpeted will give it a finished look. Carpeting and of course getting the sub in. I'm still waiting on those to arrive. I will hopefully be posting a picture of a nice finished product once it is done.
Thanks. It still looks a little rough but getting it carpeted will give it a finished look. Carpeting and of course getting the sub in. I'm still waiting on those to arrive. I will hopefully be posting a picture of a nice finished product once it is done.
Where did you order your carpet from? I got mine from Southern Car Parts and is a perfect match.
You could cancel your sub order and get one of my low priced w10GTi mk II....
Where did you order your carpet from? I got mine from Southern Car Parts and is a perfect match.
You could cancel your sub order and get one of my low priced w10GTi mk II....
I have had my mind set on a W6 for some time now so there is no turning back now.
As far as the carpet, I wish I would of had that info earlier. I received my carpet but I am not happy with it so now I am waiting on an order from Parts-Express for their premium carpet. It should arrive today, so I am hoping I will be happy with the color and quality of it. Originally, I ordered carpet through Amazon vendor.
I got everything else ready to go, I am just waiting on getting the carpeting done. I received the W6 yesterday and on first impressions, without hearing it, it looks and feels like the real deal. It is one heavy 10" sub.
Last edited by TorchRedFred; Aug 2, 2018 at 12:32 PM.
I have had my mind set on a W6 for some time now so there is no turning back now.
As far as the carpet, I wish I would of had that info earlier. I received my carpet but I am not happy with it so now I am waiting on an order from Parts-Express for their premium carpet. It should arrive today, so I am hoping I will be happy with the color and quality of it. Originally, I ordered carpet through Amazon vendor.
I got everything else ready to go, I am just waiting on getting the carpeting done. I received the W6 yesterday and on first impressions, without hearing it, it looks and feels like the real deal. It is one heavy 10" sub.
it looks darker in the online picture, but it is a perfect match..
a love the W6 and W7... did a bunch of installs with those. How thick is your front baffle? You could also lower your internal volume by securing a block of wood equal to the airspace that though want to subtract inside the box.
it looks darker in the online picture, but it is a perfect match..
a love the W6 and W7... did a bunch of installs with those. How thick is your front baffle? You could also lower your internal volume by securing a block of wood equal to the airspace that though want to subtract inside the box.
Nice find with the carpet. For myself it's too late since I started the carpeting already. Good to know that option is out there. Someone will probably find that helpful after seeing your post.
As far as the front baffle, everything is 3/4 inch birch except the doors to the cubbies. As far as internal volume, I intentionally built the box to be bigger than JL specs. I believe JL prefers to advertise that their sub would work fine in a small enclosure, but I have a hunch that it will be happier in something a little larger. I even think that I should of went a little larger than I did but I wanted to be conservative and play it safe, but like you said, subtracting airspace is always an option and easy enough to do, unlike trying to add airspace after the fact.
Last edited by TorchRedFred; Aug 3, 2018 at 02:59 AM.
Finished the box and installed it. As you can see, I stained the cubby doors. I'm not sure if I'm going to leave them like that or end up carpeting them. I figured I would leave it for now and decide later. The sub sounds great. I only got to mess with it for a little while before I ran out of time.
Last edited by TorchRedFred; Aug 5, 2018 at 08:14 PM.
2023 Corvette of the Year Finalist (C8) - Modified
2023 Corvette of the Year Finalist (C6) - Modified
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Looks good! I guess you could mount the amp to the back if you wanted to. Interested in seeing if the box should of been slanted towards the back some vs straight up.
Looks good! I guess you could mount the amp to the back if you wanted to. Interested in seeing if the box should of been slanted towards the back some vs straight up.
I thought about incorporating the amp with the box build but I was reluctant to redo so much of my wiring since I just made some adjustments to include a DSP and all the wiring is measured and neatly tucked away.
Slanting the sub sub towards the back slightly would of been more ideal and if I was having someone build it, I would of done it that way and made it less boxy looking also. But since I did the build myself, I tried to keep it as simple as possible to compliment my limited skill set.
So did you leave the internal volume the same, slightly above what JL Audio had specced? If so, how does it sound? Does it hit really low and accurately? I have always had better luck going a little larger on volume than what they spec.
Also just out of curiosity, is there a reason you went plywood? I have never tried it before, always used MDF.
So did you leave the internal volume the same, slightly above what JL Audio had specced? If so, how does it sound? Does it hit really low and accurately? I have always had better luck going a little larger on volume than what they spec.
Also just out of curiosity, is there a reason you went plywood? I have never tried it before, always used MDF.
My box is .75 cu ft (without the sub installed) which is only .12 cu ft larger than JL spec. Right now it sounds real good and hits pretty strong. It does a good job of shaking my rear view mirror. I still need to make some adjustments to get everything right, so it's kind of trial and error for me right now. I make some adjustments and leave it for awhile to see how it sounds with different types of music and then I go back and tweak it a little. Problem is I don't get to drive the car much at all so doing it this way takes me awhile, lol.
As far as using plywood, I saw that birch plywood was a good alternative to MDF for sub boxes. It's lighter, more rigid and stronger than MDF. Because of the size of my box with cubbies, I figured it would be a good choice. Because it's more rigid and stronger, I also figured that 3/4" birch would be equivalent to 1" or greater MDF and I would be less likely to need any internal bracing. Also I like the idea that ply holds screws much better than MDF. When comparing pros vs. cons against MDF, the only con that I could find was that ply was a little more expensive.
Last edited by TorchRedFred; Aug 8, 2018 at 12:56 AM.
My box is .75 cu ft (without the sub installed) which is only .12 cu ft larger than JL spec. Right now it sounds real good and hits pretty strong. It does a good job of shaking my rear view mirror. I still need to make some adjustments to get everything right, so it's kind of trial and error for me right now. I make some adjustments and leave it for awhile to see how it sounds with different types of music and then I go back and tweak it a little. Problem is I don't get to drive the car much at all so doing it this way takes me awhile, lol.
As far as using plywood, I saw that birch plywood was a good alternative to MDF for sub boxes. It's lighter, more rigid and stronger than MDF. Because of the size of my box with cubbies, I figured it would be a good choice. Because it's more rigid and stronger, I also figured that 3/4" birch would be equivalent to 1" or greater MDF and I would be less likely to need any internal bracing. Also I like the idea that ply holds screws much better than MDF. When comparing pros vs. cons against MDF, the only con that I could find was that ply was a little more expensive.
Ahhhhh....that makes sense on the plywood and good to know.
Also, I wanted to add a couple observations or things I learned from building my sub box.
1: Wood glue vs liquid nails. Wood glue is far superior to liquid nails. I started doing my box with liquid nails but then I started to question if this was the right choice as it didn't seem to be as strong as I thought it should be. After doing some research online and seeing some comparative videos, I realized that liquid nails is not as strong as the name would imply. For anyone building a box, I would suggest sticking with wood glue. It dries faster and absorbs into the wood better and the final results are it is much stronger and holds much better than liquid nails.
2: Binding posts vs terminal cups. Originally I ordered a terminal cup to attach my speaker wires to the box. But after seeing the size of the cup and the 3" hole it asked to be cut into the side of the box, I decided to go with binding posts instead. A 3" hole would of compromised the strength and integrity of my box by taking out a big portion of one of my walls. Instead, I drilled two small holes into my box from one of the cubbies. I then tightly screwed in the binding posts for an air tight seal, and ran my wires from the amp to the post and then from inside the box, from the post to the subwoofer. Only downside is, posts do stick out a little so it might not be for every box. But for me with the cubbies, it worked perfect and the posts are concealed and protected inside the cubby. I used some Dayton Audio Binding Posts from parts express. They worked great and were easy to install. https://www.parts-express.com/parts-...pair--091-1154
Last edited by TorchRedFred; Aug 13, 2018 at 08:52 PM.
Also, I wanted to add a couple observations or things I learned from building my sub box.
1: Wood glue vs liquid nails. Wood glue is far superior to liquid nails. I started doing my box with liquid nails but then I started to question if this was the right choice as it didn't seem to be as strong as I thought it should be. After doing some research online and seeing some comparative videos, I realized that liquid nails is not as strong as the name would imply. For anyone building a box, I would suggest sticking with wood glue. It dries faster and absorbs into the wood better and the final results are it is much stronger and holds much better than liquid nails.
2: Binding posts vs terminal cups. Originally I ordered a terminal cup to attach my speaker wires to the box. But after seeing the size of the cup and the 3" hole it asked to be cut into the side of the box, I decided to go with binding posts instead. A 3" hole would of compromised the strength and integrity of my box by taking out a big portion of one of my walls. Instead, I drilled two small holes into my box from one of the cubbies. I then tightly screwed in the binding posts for an air tight seal, and ran my wires from the amp to the post and then from inside the box, from the post to the subwoofer. Only downside is, posts do stick out a little so it might not be for every box. But for me with the cubbies, it worked perfect and the posts are concealed and protected inside the cubby. I used some Dayton Audio Binding Posts from parts express. They worked great and were easy to install. https://www.parts-express.com/parts-...pair--091-1154
Those binding posts are pretty slick. I would have never thought of that. Man, I have ordered a lot of stuff from Parts Express over the years, it's a great resource for the do it yourselfer.
What DSP are you using? And how does it sound so far?
As far as DSP, I went with the AudioControl DM608. Why did I choose the the AudioControl DM608? Basically I chose it because I found it for what I thought was a great deal for $400 brand new on eBay. Was it worth it? Well I'll give you some of the pros and cons.
Pros: It is pretty easy to use. The software was easy to install and easy to learn. If you are wanting to run your system active, a DSP is a must have and a great asset. The 608 also auto tunes to give you a nice flat EQ to start with and then make adjustments from there. It has 6 input channels and 8 output channels and if thats not enough you can jump to the DM810 which is basically the same unit but with 8 inputs and 10 output channels. Price was also great and connecting it to my system was a breeze.
Cons: The biggest con was that it didn't change the sound as much as I had hoped. It still sounded like my Pioneer after I installed the DSP. I was expecting the sound to change a little more. I had heard good things about other DSP's brands and how they can make a bad or good system sound great. Maybe my expectations were too high but I didn't notice much of a difference with the AudioControl compared to the Pioneer. A slight improvement with the tuning capabilities, but I was hoping to not recognize my Pioneer and that wasn't the case. Maybe AudioControl is the Pioneer of DSP's? I don't know enough to answer for sure, but that is my take on it right now. Another con of the 608 is that I was hoping to tune each speaker individually, but with the 608 I had to tune the front speakers as a pair and then the same for the rear speakers. I had read that a firmware update corrected this, but I couldn't find the ability to do this even after running the update. The only other con applies to all DSP's, and that is that you need to be careful because you can blow a speaker if you are not familiar enough with DSP's, and I did blow a speaker. But on the positive side, it is what motivated me to build the sub box and finally upgrade to a full size subwoofer over the TW3 shallow I had before. And the 10W6 has been a nice improvement so far.
Building a sub box
