anybody else see their sub bellow out smoke from the ports of the box while drivin down the road?...i just made a bass cd with a bunch of those sub test tracks, i was planning on using it to fix rattles in the car this weekend but i guess i don't get to now. damn, and it sounded so good before this. i was drivin along feeling the rumble when i started smelling something burning, i looked in the rearview and saw two streams of thick white smoke hitting the back window...it was still playing good, but after checking it out and not finding the cause of it, i turned it up again like a dumbass to show my friends the smoke and now it's completely shot. any suggestions as to why this would happen? it's a pioneer 12" in a bandpass box, the sub is 450 watts max and i have 200 watts goin to it. the speaker is like 2 or 3 years old but i didn't see this coming at all. any ideas would be great cuz i'm clueless, i've never seen a speaker smoke like that (i'm guessing it was the voice coil overheating or somethin).... sometimes i amaze myself with stupidity.

haha..sorry to hear that man. Any yes, i have blown a sub or two in my day :) The smoke you saw was the voice coils buring up, along with the motor assembly. Usually if you did blow the coil, you won't be able to push in the cone of the sub, or it will just barely move, and make some grinding noises when pushing on it. You say u used a bass test cd. Those cd's have very low bass recorded on them, usually at full output. Since you have a bandpass box, you probably didn't even hear the very low bass notes(35 Hz and down), because the majority of bandpass boxes dont go that low, you won't hear that bass. If played for the right amount of time at that frequency, you will blow a sub very easily because ALOT of heat is created at those very low frequencies. In most other kind of boxes, esp sealed, you will have a better chance of hearing those really low frequencies, and maybe even hear the sub bottom out, with the bass, but you wouldn't hear that bottoming out in a band pass box. My suggestion is to run a sealed box, or a well designed ported box, both will sound much better than a bandpass, with much better sound quality. Bandpasses are good for boomy bass, but lack a broader range of detail. I have heard some realy good sounding bandpass boxes before, but i have always liked the clean, punchy sound of a good sealed box.

yeah those bass cds will destroy your subs.

i had a jl 15w6 in a ported box (it took up my whole trunk) and played one of those cds a few times. next thing i know i hear some flapping. it was that rubber seal that goes around the sub.

i glued it up and sold it to some kid at school

Need to check the specs of the sub too. If you build your box to play lower than what your sub can handle you will torch it pretty quick. That's why I never understanf why peolpe buy those pre-febbed boxes, they aren't made for your sub 99.9% of the time. Doesn't matter what kind of box you build, if it's built to the proper specs it will sounds good. How long have you had the sub? You might be able to take it back and get it swapped out for a new one from the place you bought it from. Sorry to say but Pioneer subs really aren't made to take to much abuse, if you get another one I wouldn't try to push it to low again.

eh, i haven't had the sub for too long but i got the speaker, box, and amp from a friend (no warranty) for 60 bucks so it's not much of a loss. it was my first sub, i had my fun and plan to take care of whatever i replace it with (hopefully it'll be a lil tougher)