Sup from New Mexico

[Kenamond]

I'm Mack, live in Los Alamos, NM (that's a state) for 25 years now. My BFF in high school (30 years ago) had a step brother (15 years older than him) that owned a car/home audio store in my home town. So I knew what Dynamat was when it first hit the market, learned a bunch of stuff about speakers, room gain, and particularly subwoofers, way back then. It wasn't deep knowledge, but it planted the seed.

I had a couple of rich friends that paid to have nice sound systems in their brand new cars, and I was fascinated by the tech, was bound for college (mechanical engineering) and ate it up.

I built a sub enclosure for my POS 1986 Pontiac Grand Am in ~1993 based on a ported pair of 12" Kickers and input from my friend's step-brother's employees (two good friends worked there at the time) and I'm proud to say that my daughter and son both used that same box in the past 4 years (dug the box up from the basement) and after 25 years it still BUMPED! My son instagram-ed Kicker with some pics and video of a box with speakers that might have been older than they were and they heart-eyed him back.
So both of my kids had better car stereos than I did. Unacceptable!!!

I now make bank compared to 25 years ago, so I decided to pimp out my 2018 4RUNNER Limited, sound-wise. So I bought head unit, speakers, amps, harness adapters, power wiring kits, distribution and fuse blocks, 150 square feet of SoundSkin, etc. and then got bit by COVID supply chain problems and am still waiting (5 months!!!) on my front door and dash speakers/tweets.
1800W total through 800.8 and 1000.1 class D amps and a JL Audio 12W7AE3 sub.

Funny thing is that I then had to build a box for the W7. I always wanted to get into woodworking and have been pretty damned handy with cars and home improvement over the years, and any excuse to buy more tools was a good thing. So I decided to get a nice table saw, table router and dust collection unit. Because I needed to program the DSPs in the amps, I decided I needed a new laptop . And I found a local supplier for 3/4" 13 ply Baltic birch plywood and bought 4 5'x5' sheets just to keep my busy with speaker enclosures.

Anyway, you all probably know about the story of the little boy/girl who needed to calculate a sealed/ported box and then learned about bandpass and tapped horns and all that. That's me right now, except that I took (and understood) calculus in college and have been writing physics software for 25 years. So I'm craving the equations and theory and stuff.

As I implied, my son (16) and daughter (18) each wanted a system when they got their provisional licenses. My daughter bought all her **** (head unit, speakers, amp, wiring) and used my old Kicker box. Two years later, it was my son's turn. He used even more of my old gear - Alpine 4-channel 400W amp, Phoenix Gold mono 500W amp and old Kicker box - and then spent his own cash on head unit and (Morel) speakers.

There's currently a dispute about who owns *MY* old Kicker box and subs. Daughter got a different car, son (and I) stole the Kicker box out of her old car and put it in his. She was out of town, so, easy!

I taught both of them about the wiring situation, so they had to run the 4ga through the firewall and under carpet, run signal vs power vs speaker wire, learned to solder and use shrink wrap, crimp connectors, etc. I even made my son do his own fuse calculations.
Now my daughter's left the nest but my son and I are geeking out on it. His car is unregistered still after 9 months of COVID and DMV ******** on-line appointments, paperwork corrections and cancellations. He drives it up and down the private drive once a month to keep all the gears lubed.

I'm technically a scientist, so I'm starving for details. My son is in HS but is just as musically inclined as me (drums, guitar, vocals) and LOVES listening to music, so we're riding the COVID wave through music.

I've spent a couple hundred hours reading **** on this site so far and will keep at it.

-Mack

[lindamar]

Hello there Mack, welcome
Hola, bienvenido

.Pepe.

[merlin el mago]

Welcome Mack.

Benvingut Mack.

[Duke58]

Welcome Mack!

My hometown is Albuquerque, I'm retired from Sandia Labs.

[planet10]

Originally Posted by Kenamond

...3/4" 13 ply Baltic birch plywood and bought 4 5'x5’ sheets...

:^)

Given that 13 ply BB in 5x5 sheets is really about 18mm (not 19.05mm = 3/4”) i do hope that actually measured the thickness and got the right size panels.

dave

[Kenamond]

Although I knew that the thickness wasn't English units, we were careful with our measurements throughout the build. We only got bit about 10 times! Some of it was due to thickness variation across each board.
My grand plan was to get my son's enclosure "close enough" and learn from our mistakes so that I'd do better on my own project. Yes, it's good to be the dad.
My son's sub was a Kicker 12" L7 powered by an 800W RMS Kicker KX mono amp. Mine will be a JL Audio 12" W7AE3 powered by JL Audio 1000W mono amp. His is "done" less carpeting. It will hide any slight deviations due to thickness variation and (my son's) mistakes. Mine will be like an ebony grand piano, glossy so you can see yourself in the reflections.
Some pictures of my son's amp and us having fun with our new brad nailer.

[Kenamond]

And here's the boy "doing his snowboard thing"