Basser Subwoofer cab for E39 Touring review / install tips

[geargrinder]

After a hiccup in my aftermarket DSP (long story, in another thread...) blew up my front tweeters and OEM sub (which was working shockingly well for a tiny 5" speaker in a tiny plastic box) I was faced with the need for a subwoofer fix. After contemplating a number of solutions including mounting a 'real' speaker in the OEM plastic box, and fabricating my own sub box for the spot, I lucked out in having Redshift recommend "Basser" - a car speaker accessory mfr in Poland, selling via eBay, and making custom sub enclosures to fit many BMW's. Lo and behold they had an E39 sub box at a cheap price, and vs facing a weekend of MDF dust inhalation and fussing around, I pulled the trigger based on Redshifts positive impression of the M3 unit he had gotten from them.

Well when the unit arrived I was immediately impressed. Clearly they are 'laid up' from MDF made on CNC router slices - very surprising as I expected typical box construction. The finish and quality was much higher than I'd expected for $150 - in fact I'd kinda expected a typical eBay cheapy item, and was really impressed.






However, I had feared the fit question, even though the pictures on their site show the unit fitting right into the stock spot. Knowing how tight that cubby is, I knew there could be issues trying to get a box that big to fit in the space.

Sure enough, right off the bat, no way the thing slides in there.

A quick eBay PM to the seller asking for install notes or instructions provided the excellently detailed and helpful guidelines: "move wires and soundproofing". Aahhh. Great. OK. Thanks so much. Like how/what/where/which maybe would be helpful...

Well in the end it's not too bad. A few little wiring re-routes really, much easier than I had feared... Below Part 1 are the basics. For a pre-facelift car probably you only need those steps.

HOWEVER, I did find that there was no way the unit would fit in my car, in that spot, without some kind of modification. I am pretty sure that either the unit was designed for a pre-facelift car (or perhaps a Euro-stripper model without as much SRS safety stuff that we get in USA?) that doesn't have the "Battery Safety Terminal", or, maybe, that the seller intends you to delete the BST as part of the install. Not wanting to mess with the BST at ALL, I instead modified the bottom of the unit to make clearance for the BST.

Here's quick rundown of what needs to be done, in case anybody else decides to try one of these... in two parts...

Part 1 - Car Prep:

General prep...

1. Remove cargo load floor (all parts) and unbolt the right side bottom plastic trim support that holds up the floor next to the battery.
2. Remove factory sub and mounting system of course. Including left side vertical mounting pin and right side mount bracket that the large shaft w/ knob (heh) threads into.
3. Disconnect battery. Remove soft padding that hangs over fuse panel with fuse instructions etc. (typical BMW plastic trim rivet in upper right corner).

Fuse/relay harness re-routing
The first big thing you need to do is re-route the large cable bundle that runs to the fuse & relay panel so it no longer runs through the little triangle where the sub will need to go:

1. If the car has PDC, then unbolt the PDC module bracket and remove it, discard the bracket
2. Unbolt fuse and relay panel in upper right corner (3 bolts).
3. Unclip all fuse carriers and relay carriers from the white plastic bracket. I penciled "1", "2", "3" etc. on the tops of the relays so that I could be sure to get them back in order later. I did not remove any fuses or relays from sockets but I did snap some pix just in case things fell out during the process.
4. Un-thread the harness by passing the relay & fuse carrier sub-assemblies back behind the metal cross-member. There is a black plastic cable retainer behind the cross-member, cut or break this or push it out from behind, it will no longer be used.
5. Bend the cable bundle up and across the front of the cross-member and snap carriers back into the white plastic bracket. Ensure cables have smoothest run possible as you snap them back in.
6. Once you are satisfied that the cable bundle will route cleanly, bolt the white bracket back in.
7. Secure big bundle down with a zip-tie, using the hole for the old cable retainer. The big bundle should now run in front of the cross-member then back down behind the plastic bracket in a clean tidy fashion.
8. If the car has PDC, then plug the module back in, and slide up behind the metal cross member so that it in no way intrudes into the opening. Using holes in the cross-member if possible, thread a long zip-tie back around the module to secure it to the backside of the metal cross-member next to the fuse & relay carrier. It should be relatively invisible now.

Top black soundproof/trim modification:
The second required modification is to the black plastic trim & soundproofing strip that runs across the top of the compartment, as it has a couple of protrusions coming down that interfere with the top of the sub-box. There are three options... any of these should work fine.

1. Keep the black part but slice the protrusions off cleanly w/ a oscillating tool (ex: fein multimaster, bosch multi-X etc.) This is what I did, removing the part to modify it then replacing it. In hindsight you probably could cut the protrusions off in-situ without all the trim removal (if you have a good tool like above), and I'd try that instead but you'd have to be careful not to slice into something else.
2. Cut the entire back half of the black piece off. Not sure you could do this in-situ without hazards. Would give you bit more room to work when installing/removing the sub-box.
3. Delete the entire black piece. This should be fine honestly. If you have PDC then the PDC warning speaker is clipped to it and needs to be tucked away but there's plenty of room for this and it would be fine.

To remove that plastic part from the car, a whole host of trim needs removing...

1. Remove the back seat (4 torx bolts in the cargo-carrier hangers)
2. the inside C-pillar trim (snaps out at top then slides up)
3. the outside seat bolster (screw at the top, bolt at nut at the bottom, and a big metal snap-fit retainer at the top that pops out)
4. the cargo-cover socket (2 torx bolts and a screw)
5. then the long ventilated trim that goes along the base of the window... (3 screws)
6. then the carpeted panel that covers the fender can be removed (various plastic pin-rivets) and the black plastic piece removed and any of the above options pursued.

Here's the idea:


Bin cover mod:
Lastly you want to pull the soundproofing off the bin cover, and cut off the plastic pins that protrude from it. You may be able to leave the pins but it will be very very tight fit to get the cover to snap in place.

Fitting notes:
You might find it still seems the box won't fit without removing the hatch sill trim every time. This is not the case, if you slide it relatively straight in, you can wedge it in past that corner. Yes it will be very tight and seem like it won't come out but it will work. HOWEVER the black plastic floor support next to the battery must come out before installing/removing the box every time - any time you want to get the box out the floor parts need to come up, then that support, then you can wedge the box in and out. I intend to not replace the nuts on that panel so that if I need to quickly access the battery or fuses on the roadside, I can pull it out and pull the box out quickly.


Part 2 - Box Mod
Basically the box doesn't seem designed to sit on a Battery Safety Terminal type setup. If you try to install it as-is, the bottom will be riding hard on the terminal, forcing the protrusion on the back that goes into the triangular pocket to bind up, and not be able to seat all the way back. On top of that, I personally don't think it's smart/safe to have the sub riding on the battery terminal itself at all times.

If you relieve the area above the terminal however, the box will sit cleanly on the sturdy metal battery hold-down strap, while putting no pressure on the post or terminal.

Basically the idea is to route out a little rectangle in that corner of the box. This is easy work on a router table if you have one. It is messier and trickier by hand - I tried that first being too lazy to set up my table but it was one of those "the lazy way comes out worse and takes longer than the right way" things so thankfully I did it the right way in the end. I am not going to get into how to use a router or router table aside from few passing tips - if you don't know this stuff find a buddy who does...

1. Test fit the sub-box and see where the terminal rubs. You should find you can't fit it fully into the pocket and get the panel cover on. If you push it in and move it around a bit it will leave a nice little rub mark on the carpet covering to confirm the correct corner that you need to route out.
2. Mark out (masking tape works pretty decently) a rectangle that is 125mm by 45mm along from that corner inwards. This is the pocket you will route out.
3. Cut the carpet along the lines with a sharp mat knife , and then peel it off to expose the rectangle.
4. Setup the router table with the fence and a stop block to correspond to the length and width of the slot we want to route.
5. Route the socket out to about 17mm - I suggest a very shallow first pass along the outside lines to check and confirm your setup is cutting where you want, then you can just to repeated horizontal/vertical passes until the whole pocket is clean. An option certainly would be to route fully through the corner (or if you inadvertantly route too deep and go all the way through... not a big deal...) , then glue a rectangle back in in from the backside, but the inside of the box is a bit rough from being laid up in slices so it would be hard to get a great mating surface inside there.
6. Test fit the box. If you have done all above already it should fit and you should be able to put the floor-support back in, then test-fit the compartment cover panel succesfully.

Should look like this:



That's it. Nice little box, finds a way to get 15L out of that little cubby which is impressive. HTH somebody who decides to give this guy a try...

Any final install pics?

Finally got a respectable driver to load in there so worth taking some pix - Dayton RSS265HO-44 - man that thing is a monster.
Overkill for my needs/style but in early listening sounds amazing nonetheless.



The temp speaker I had in there didn't have a huge protruding surround, but this one does and the cover ribs would contact it, so I had to slice some more of the reinforcing ribs away around that area... pretty easy task and seems to have worked fine.

[thrty8street]

Any final install pics?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[geargrinder]

Heh heh no - didnt bother to take one when i threw it in because the speaker i have in for temp is an old ugly beater beater an its only for short temp.... Looks cheezy but i can take a pic this week if i get a sec. Hopefully the good one arrives soon anyway...

[CTJoe]

Nice! Ever hear of these guys? I bought a set of Scan-Speak drivers from them to build my home theater speaker system.

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/

You can use Thiele-Small parameters http://www.members.shaw.ca/Loudspeak...ele-small.html to find a driver that would be nearly perfect for that enclosure, if you haven't already.

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http://sound.westhost.com/tsp.htm

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http://www.home-speaker.net/

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http://diyaudioprojects.com/Technica...ll-Parameters/

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http://diyaudioprojects.com/Testeq/DATS/

[geargrinder]

Absolutely Joe. I picked up some old homebrew "Transmission Line" speakers for free from CL years back, then brought them home, threw out all the guts, and totally re-did them. Got almost all my parts and drivers in that case from Madisound for sure.

At the moment I happen to have had an 8" car sub driver that was lying around because I'd found it bizarrely in a nice set of used vintage hi-fi speakers I picked off the junk pile (EPI's I think but I'd need to check my records). Yes some moron had whacked a car sub-woof driver into a New England speaker school full range hi-fi cabinet.

I thought it was total junk but poked around and it's an Optimus CSW800 which turns out to have been made by MTX back in the day and people say they were actually OK, which is not really here nor there as it's purely coincidence that I have this lying around and made a quick adapter ring to fit it in the 10" hole temporarily while I wait for better driver to arrive... It is doing great for temp placeholder duty... WAY better than the AWFUL Kenwood 'boom tube' piece of junK i also had lying around and tried to use for a little while. That thing is TERRIBLE!!!

I'm actually waiting for one of these to come, which is specially designed 10" for smaller boxes. These Reference series Daytons are supposed to be real good and this one measures just right for this application...
http://www.daytonaudio.com/index.php...subwoofer.html

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BTW, Rod Elliot / ESP / sound.westhost.com is awesome. I learned tons from reading his stuff both on speakers and amplification. The whole crossover & zobel design I have in the TL's is based on his walkthrough of zobels.

[CTJoe]

Sounds like I'm preaching to the choir! This means that you've already done the work of acoustically matching that driver to the box, which means I will be copying what you do, if it's applicable to the E39 sedan. Hope you don't mind
Oh wow! I would love a pair of TL speakers with a nice SET amp. Speaking of vintage speakers, I've got a friend with a pair of Klipschorns collecting dust, mounted near the roof of his garage. I never even noticed them, and I wonder if he even realizes what he has. Of course, I've got to tell him, then make an offer.
I used to have an older McIntosh Labs system (about as esoteric as I've ever gotten; champagne dreams and malt liquor means) with a very, very heavy amp. I can't remember any model numbers except the XR-14 speakers. It got stolen from my car a while back when I was in the process of moving, and ended up being hospitalized along the way.

Right now, The nicest sounding setup I've got (the home theater speakers I built do a good job with movies, but they're not great with music, most likely because I set up the crossover for movies and having the cabinets close to the walls for convenience) is an Antique Sound Lab MG-Head OTL mark III DT headphone amp with a pair of Amperex 6BQ5 Bugleboys and a Raytheon 12AX7 (all from the 1950's), a Musical Fidelity V-DAC, and a pair of Shure SE-535 earbuds. I use JRiver to play FLAC files, some of which are 24-bit, 192 kHz (I'm still not utterly convinced it's much better than a good CD or SACD). One day, I'd like to get something like the Sennheiser HD-800's, and maybe either one of Woo Audio's amps, or build some sort of tube scheme.
I'd pretty much given up on car stereo, until I heard the one in the BMW. For a factory system, I think it's pretty decent, and with a little tweaking, can be even decent-er.

[geargrinder]

yeah. audio.

I love audio gear, but am definitely an audiophile skeptic and tend to side with the EE audio guys who poo on so much of the top-end consumer gear as voodoo BS. You can tell why I love Rod Elliots site, right? "OK here's the science, here's why thing X is not 'hi fidelity', but why people think it is..." etc. Tube sound is cool as long as you embrace the idea that it's introduced-distortion that is enjoyable. Vinyl and reel-tape as well of course. I mean, crap, with guitar amps introduced distortion is the name of the game so I'm not sure why audiophiles have to cling to their rosaries while chanting "my tube amp is pure my tube amp is pure..." but that's how it is. And I think that's the deal w/ digital sources.. pretty well proven that super-bit rates are undetectable by humans and most audiophile claims to contrary are psycho****tic placebo stuff but god forbid you start an argument about that... (which is to say I back you up on the good-CD vs super-bitrate FLAC thing...)

Most of my 2-way stuff is vintage and mid-fi or upper-mid-fi transistor. I got into working on the gear via guitar amps (was rebuilding and modding tube guitar amps and started to stumble on old discarded cool vintage solid state hifi stuff and "gee I bet I can fix that...") and next thing I new I had enough crap to stock a small warehouse with old vintage mid-fi stuff.

Example in my music/electronics workshop I have a big old Yamaha CR-2040 monster receiver with some Infinite Slope speakers, and a California Audio Aria tube-pre-amp CD player. Most of my vintage stuff has come to me free or near free - for example that whole setup - the 2040 was (is) cosmetically banged up and the vol pot had lost it's zero stop so you could turn it down to zero then if you went a little to far suddenly hit 100% (Ooops never liked those speakers anyway) and I think it was like $50 on fleaBay. The Infinite Slopes are really amazing and dumpster find discards. One had a blown tweeter so I replaced them with new equivalents (Vifa's? the exact P/N was NLA but I got the new updated version...) CD-player - dumpster find. The whole setup just kills.
http://classicreceivers.com/yamaha-cr-2040
http://www.audioasylumtrader.com/ca/ca.html?ca=53611
http://www.hifiengine.com/manual_lib...abs/aria.shtml

Down in my basement workshop right now I have an old Luxman IA and a sweet Yamaha separate FM tuner (I got real into tuners for a while, got the gear to do mediocre alignments and everything... have a bunch of those too... including a real nice Nikko) pushing 2 pairs of crappy dumpster find&fix beater speakers (some walnut Optimus 7's - good - and a set of Blose something or others - suck but fill the corners with bass so they serve a purpose).

In the garage I have an old Marantz receiver but the FM section ain't great so I have a cheaper later Sony digital tuner in front of that, playing into some Optimus ribbon-tweeter bookshelves with mods (stiffened up cabinets w/ some concrete, new caps...) hanging from ceiling upside down so the ribbons are down at ear level and with a cheap sub in the corner. http://www.stereophile.com/standloud...s/695ratshack/ All that stuff was free except I think the Sony digital tuner cost me $10 on ebay IIRC. Mighta gotten the Marantz in a pile of 5-6 amps and receivers that I paid $50 for, don't remember exactly. At any rate - it's a quirky fun beater garage junk setup for sure.

Most of my free gear didn't work or needed some kind of repair naturally but I love finding this great old gear that still sounds good, fixing it, and putting it into service. Around our houses are even more vintage mid-fi setups like that - wife uses a Yamaha 1040 w/ some old Marantz cabinets rebuilt to be EPI-100 clones in the living room and a Yamaha 840 w/ some weirdo unbranded 1970's speakers (there were some quite good ones BITD by the way... not the generic white-van speakers necessarily but low or no-brand functional clones of Advents/EPI's/AR's/Genesis/etc...) in her office.

All that said - our real main daily HT setups are actual modern gear, but given how much good sound I have gotten used to for free, I tend to be a semi-bargain-hunter even when I buy new gear. I have such good sounding budget setups that when I walk into some $10k setup I have a hard time finding anything to like about it. I got hooked into the Emotiva thing so at both houses the main daily HT systems have Emotiva HT processors fronting XPA-5 power amps. Gobs of clean power for days.

At one place I run the aforementioned TL's as the mains (with, to be honest, crap "whatever was lying around" speakers for the surrounds, but they seem to work fine for such a purpose - that is actually a good listening room and is somewhat forgiving...) and they sound excellent although are fairly directional and the 'wow factor' tends to fall-off off-axis (I used a ring tweeter, not sure that's a contributor or maybe the baffle setup or what...).

At the other place I have another Emotiva setup going into a set of "Unisound" fringe-boutique-flash-in-the-pan tower speakers that I picked up on a ridiculous out-of-business/discontinued deal and overhauled the x-overs per some innerwebz speaker nuts measurements and design. Also sound extremely good. Each house also has a big ass powered BiC F12 sub (again - bargain hunter alert...)

So that's that. /home-hifi-OT

On the E39 sound thing:

You are welcome to have a listen to my setup at some point - even at the moment w/ bit of weirdo temporary and incomplete front setup it sounds really good I think. To be honest blowing out the front upper tweeters did me a favor in a way. Clearly confirmed that the factory 2-tweeter/3-way thing sucks and a 2-way is the only way to go. (which is what a lot of audiophile speaker design / analysis guys would tell you anyway... more drivers is not good drivers unless you really have a good reason and a plan for it... and there's no reason to have 2 tweeter drivers covering such a narrow band of highs when one is well more than sufficient...)

In fact for a super budget system I'd be willing to bet that this would be surprisingly good:
- whack in basic retail 2-way speaker setup that comes with a crossover in the fronts (~$100)
- power fronts with an inexpensive power amp that takes speaker-level inputs from the factory setup (~$100)

You'd still have the crap rear soundstage tweeter problem, and you'd still have the crap factory sub roll-off / gap problem but I bet it would be big upgrade still.

The Touring and Sedan sub setups are completely different unfort - I don't know what Basser does or doesn't offer in the back for the sedan...

[blackknight530i]

yeah. audio.

I love audio gear, but am definitely an audiophile skeptic and tend to side with the EE audio guys who poo on so much of the top-end consumer gear as voodoo BS. You can tell why I love Rod Elliots site, right? "OK here's the science, here's why thing X is not 'hi fidelity', but why people think it is..." etc. Tube sound is cool as long as you embrace the idea that it's introduced-distortion that is enjoyable. Vinyl and reel-tape as well of course. I mean, crap, with guitar amps introduced distortion is the name of the game so I'm not sure why audiophiles have to cling to their rosaries while chanting "my tube amp is pure my tube amp is pure..." but that's how it is. And I think that's the deal w/ digital sources.. pretty well proven that super-bit rates are undetectable by humans and most audiophile claims to contrary are psycho****tic placebo stuff but god forbid you start an argument about that... (which is to say I back you up on the good-CD vs super-bitrate FLAC thing...)

Most of my 2-way stuff is vintage and mid-fi or upper-mid-fi transistor. I got into working on the gear via guitar amps (was rebuilding and modding tube guitar amps and started to stumble on old discarded cool vintage solid state hifi stuff and "gee I bet I can fix that...") and next thing I new I had enough crap to stock a small warehouse with old vintage mid-fi stuff.

Example in my music/electronics workshop I have a big old Yamaha CR-2040 monster receiver with some Infinite Slope speakers, and a California Audio Aria tube-pre-amp CD player. Most of my vintage stuff has come to me free or near free - for example that whole setup - the 2040 was (is) cosmetically banged up and the vol pot had lost it's zero stop so you could turn it down to zero then if you went a little to far suddenly hit 100% (Ooops never liked those speakers anyway) and I think it was like $50 on fleaBay. The Infinite Slopes are really amazing and dumpster find discards. One had a blown tweeter so I replaced them with new equivalents (Vifa's? the exact P/N was NLA but I got the new updated version...) CD-player - dumpster find. The whole setup just kills.
http://classicreceivers.com/yamaha-cr-2040
http://www.audioasylumtrader.com/ca/ca.html?ca=53611
http://www.hifiengine.com/manual_lib...abs/aria.shtml

Down in my basement workshop right now I have an old Luxman IA and a sweet Yamaha separate FM tuner (I got real into tuners for a while, got the gear to do mediocre alignments and everything... have a bunch of those too... including a real nice Nikko) pushing 2 pairs of crappy dumpster find&fix beater speakers (some walnut Optimus 7's - good - and a set of Blose something or others - suck but fill the corners with bass so they serve a purpose).

In the garage I have an old Marantz receiver but the FM section ain't great so I have a cheaper later Sony digital tuner in front of that, playing into some Optimus ribbon-tweeter bookshelves with mods (stiffened up cabinets w/ some concrete, new caps...) hanging from ceiling upside down so the ribbons are down at ear level and with a cheap sub in the corner. http://www.stereophile.com/standloud...s/695ratshack/ All that stuff was free except I think the Sony digital tuner cost me $10 on ebay IIRC. Mighta gotten the Marantz in a pile of 5-6 amps and receivers that I paid $50 for, don't remember exactly. At any rate - it's a quirky fun beater garage junk setup for sure.

Most of my free gear didn't work or needed some kind of repair naturally but I love finding this great old gear that still sounds good, fixing it, and putting it into service. Around our houses are even more vintage mid-fi setups like that - wife uses a Yamaha 1040 w/ some old Marantz cabinets rebuilt to be EPI-100 clones in the living room and a Yamaha 840 w/ some weirdo unbranded 1970's speakers (there were some quite good ones BITD by the way... not the generic white-van speakers necessarily but low or no-brand functional clones of Advents/EPI's/AR's/Genesis/etc...) in her office.

All that said - our real main daily HT setups are actual modern gear, but given how much good sound I have gotten used to for free, I tend to be a semi-bargain-hunter even when I buy new gear. I have such good sounding budget setups that when I walk into some $10k setup I have a hard time finding anything to like about it. I got hooked into the Emotiva thing so at both houses the main daily HT systems have Emotiva HT processors fronting XPA-5 power amps. Gobs of clean power for days.

At one place I run the aforementioned TL's as the mains (with, to be honest, crap "whatever was lying around" speakers for the surrounds, but they seem to work fine for such a purpose - that is actually a good listening room and is somewhat forgiving...) and they sound excellent although are fairly directional and the 'wow factor' tends to fall-off off-axis (I used a ring tweeter, not sure that's a contributor or maybe the baffle setup or what...).

At the other place I have another Emotiva setup going into a set of "Unisound" fringe-boutique-flash-in-the-pan tower speakers that I picked up on a ridiculous out-of-business/discontinued deal and overhauled the x-overs per some innerwebz speaker nuts measurements and design. Also sound extremely good. Each house also has a big ass powered BiC F12 sub (again - bargain hunter alert...)

So that's that. /home-hifi-OT

On the E39 sound thing:

You are welcome to have a listen to my setup at some point - even at the moment w/ bit of weirdo temporary and incomplete front setup it sounds really good I think. To be honest blowing out the front upper tweeters did me a favor in a way. Clearly confirmed that the factory 2-tweeter/3-way thing sucks and a 2-way is the only way to go. (which is what a lot of audiophile speaker design / analysis guys would tell you anyway... more drivers is not good drivers unless you really have a good reason and a plan for it... and there's no reason to have 2 tweeter drivers covering such a narrow band of highs when one is well more than sufficient...)

In fact for a super budget system I'd be willing to bet that this would be surprisingly good:
- whack in basic retail 2-way speaker setup that comes with a crossover in the fronts (~$100)
- power fronts with an inexpensive power amp that takes speaker-level inputs from the factory setup (~$100)

You'd still have the crap rear soundstage tweeter problem, and you'd still have the crap factory sub roll-off / gap problem but I bet it would be big upgrade still.

The Touring and Sedan sub setups are completely different unfort - I don't know what Basser does or doesn't offer in the back for the sedan...

Wow, someone from a totally different field of interest of mine actually knows about Emotiva I worked for them for a summer while I was in college for EE. Great group of people that work there. They've grown a lot since I was there in 2007, but I think the core group is the same. They're business philosophy is pretty awesome. One of these days I'm going to take them up on their employee discount they offered me back then

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

[geargrinder]

VB is so retarded. The letter sequence:
s
o
m
a

is banned? Because of maybe like drugs or whatever? idiotic.

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Wow, someone from a totally different field of interest of mine actually knows about Emotiva I worked for them for a summer while I was in college for EE. Great group of people that work there. They've grown a lot since I was there in 2007, but I think the core group is the same. They're business philosophy is pretty awesome. One of these days I'm going to take them up on their employee discount they offered me back then

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Dude you are an unending source of surprises. Ha! Yep. Def a fan, which is why I have 2 full setups. The HT/AV processors aren't perfect in terms of slick user interface, but that's one of the few 'get what you pay for' compromises. I even got my dad setup w/ their integrated HTR model so they have surround finally. On my to-do list is to do some more room-measuring and hand EQ design using REW instead of the built-in auto-eq, but sounds decent in meantime...

But that said, I started to get wise to room modes and how much quality room sound comes from room prep vs gear and the hazards of room modes and comb filtering and counter-productive EQ'ing etc. and I realize now there's only so much I can do in that room to fix it up without mods that the wife won't be cool with. Interestingly it also explains why some other rooms sound great - my electronics workshop is an excellent listening room - guess what, I have piles of crap in the corners breaking up the room modes and a soft-covering on a long lateral wall... huh... Guess I have some serendipitously helpful room treatment!

[geargrinder]

first post updated w/ pix of final install.

[slickrock22]

first post updated w/ pix of final install.

You are awesome! Thank you. I was debating on how to do this and your write up gave the confidence to buy the Basser box and the PE Sub. Thanks!!

The box is in the car with your excellent instructions. I am not sure that I would have figured out how to relocate the fuse box without it.

Did you use the existing wiring or did you run new wiring from the amp? Also what gauge wire do you recommend inside the box and, if you didn't use the existing wiring, to the amp?

My other equipment comes tomorrow (Pioneer 5800BHS, NVX 5 Channel Amp). I am still struggling to pick a 6.5" component set for the door that doesn't cost $500. Prefer ~$200. Also ordered a back up cam

[geargrinder]

Cool beans. Glad it was helpful. Believe me I was totally WTF at first after assuming it would all just bolt in pretty easily.

Yeah there's no point keeping factory sub wiring when you change the amp etc. I used a fat twisted pair wire, don't recall the gauge, threaded through the rear tire well, then some regular speaker wire inside the box.

[TenaciousG]

Your write up and photos were invaluable to my own installation efforts last night! Thank you! I need to tune the amplifier today but everything fits and functions properly. Cheers!

[geargrinder]

Awesome. Did you have to clearance the bottom of the cabinet like I did or did it slip in?

I now have a bud w/ same SW installed BTW and his seems like it fits/orients better than mine. We didn't have time to pull his and see if it was modded at all for fit (he bought the car with it in), but maybe I "got a bad one" in terms of how tight it was. We'll have to do that some day.. he's pulling the car down for chain job soon so while it's out of commish maybe I'll ask to pull the sub and eyeball it.

[TenaciousG]

The positive terminal had some factory mounts that seemed to rub, so I trimmed about 8mm off the bottom in the same location and it fit very well. I tapped the PDC for my remote wire (pin 7 of the center connection) so I was already monkeying around with wires behind the rear fuse and structural crossmember.

The cover closes over the sub but there's some rattling that may go away once I trim ALL the ribbing from the back of said cover.

I didn't convert to aftermarket DSP, so it probably looks (:/ and sounds?) like a rat's nest to audiophiles...I labeled and separated wires plugging into the stock sub box, and routed the input wires to a line output converter I secured under the forward cargo panel (where the air suspension and struts are accessed). The main signal was connected to L and R crossovers to separate the highs and routed back to the door tweeters. The low signal was routed from the line output converter to a JL audio JX500/1D mono sub amp. From there I wired it back to the subwoofer, which is a JL audio 10TW1-4.

My audio expertise is limited, and it's tuned conservatively so I don't go ruining anything, but it already has a well-rounded sound to accompany the factory amp and gently used BavSound speakers I'd already found. Maybe when I clean up some wire clutter I'll post pictures.

[geargrinder]

Yeah, trimming the ribs on the cover is essential. Took me a bit to realize the ribs were pressing on the roll of the speaker cone surround. However that wasn't the main source of rattling - what really fixed it for me was laying in some thin weatherstripping into the vertical grooves along the edges of the cover, so that they fill that gap and apply just a little pressure when its snapped in. If that doesn't make sense I can take a pic at some point.

[TenaciousG]

That makes perfect sense -- if you're looking at the installed cover, the leftmost corner (closest to the front of the car) is pushed out slightly -- from the upper ribbing making contact with the box and the speaker cone surround material. Trimming that down AND applying the weather stripping would reduce the amount of rattling that occurs when the speaker is working hard.

[Cyrix2k]

I want to thank GearGrinder for the helpful installation tips. We just finished installing the Basser sub box, Dayton RSS265HO-44, and an Alpine mrv-m500 amp in my friend's touring. One thing I want to note is that Dayton sub didn't clear the box, but it's really hard to tell since the mating surface is inset. It drops in far enough for the screws to bite and look alright, but it doesn't seal. We had to use a wood file to slightly enlarge the opening until the sub basket would completely drop in. Before we did that, the sub sounded terrible as though it was badly distorted. With all the box mods done, a full complement of BSW speakers up front, and the Dynavin N7 headunit, the setup sounds fantastic. He's still running the factory hifi amp. Also, the 6 gauge scosche wiring kit walmart sells includes a fuse that drops into the factory fuse panel above the battery which helps with a tidy and safe installation of the subwoofer amp.