Adding plate amp to SB-110?

[evan]

I've got a 10" Paradigm HT sub that I bought about ten years ago and right now it's being used as an A/V stand. It accepts the speaker wire from the receiver for the front left and right channels, then has outputs for the speakers themselves.

It obviously isn't designed to handle a lot of power, but I'm thinking it might be fun to either modify it to hold a plate amp, or buy a separate power amp for it. This would have to happen on a tight budget.

I decided to get the stuff off of it and take some pics.

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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

This is what is says on the side of the capacitors.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

My multimeter reads 6.9ohms per input channel, and the tag on the bottom says "Amplifier Range: 15-150 watts, Typical Program - 100 watts".

I'm leaning toward the idea of installing a plate amp in it. Are there any places other than Parts Express that I should check out? Which amp would you recommend? Would you make the hole on the bottom bigger and put the amp there, or would you make a new cutout in the sealed chamber?

 

[Viking552]

Does your receiver have a LFE or subwoofer line output jack? The way that your sub is setup is to use an amplified signal (left and right) from your receiver. The crossover then filters the low frequencies to the sub and send the higher frequencies to your left and right speaker.

With a plate amp, you need an unmplified line signal from your receiver fed into the plate amp.

 

[evan]

Does your receiver have a LFE or subwoofer line output jack?

Yes, I'm using a Marantz SR4600 now.

 

[Viking552]

You are going to have to remove the cross over and the speaker wire posts that are attached to the back. You could enlarge that hole to fit the plate amp, but I think you might be pressed for space to do that from what I can see in the picture. You might want to consider sealing up the hole with a peice of wood and some silicone. You could either build a plate amp mounting box out of plywood or mdf and attach it to the side of the speaker box or you could build a seperate box (again out of mdf or plywood) to mount the amp in and then run speaker wire from some terminals on the amp box to new terminals on the speaker box.

Check out www.solen.ca

orhttp://www.creativesound.ca

for amps from Canadian suppliers

 

[evan]

You are going to have to remove the cross over and the speaker wire posts that are attached to the back. You could enlarge that hole to fit the plate amp, but I think you might be pressed for space to do that from what I can see in the picture. You might want to consider sealing up the hole with a peice of wood and some silicone. You could either build a plate amp mounting box out of plywood or mdf and attach it to the side of the speaker box or you could build a seperate box (again out of mdf or plywood) to mount the amp in and then run speaker wire from some terminals on the amp box to new terminals on the speaker box.

Check out www.solen.ca

orhttp://www.creativesound.ca

for amps from Canadian suppliers

Thanks for the reply.

I just noticed yesterday that Solen sells plate amps. That isn't the type of product I would usually expect to find in the "Accessories" section.

Looks like a SUB-100 would work well for this application. I think I'll just order it and figure out how I'm going to install it once it arrives. Worst case scenario, I'll build something to hold it on the outside of the box like you suggested, but ideally I'd like to build it into the existing box.

In a bandpass enclosure, would decreasing the volume of one chamber have more negative effect than the other (vented vs. sealed)?