# Comp Kicker Subwoofer review/discussion



## jkem21cb

Hello. i am new to this website and any forum site in general. i do want to start a thread that people can use to their advantage free of that fake b******t that other review spots can have. i recently bought 2 12" Comp Kickers my system consist of alpine deck, 4 6.5" kenwood speakers, 1600watt amp cables, PRS-D2000T amp and my 2 subs. all of these components work extremely well. In fact i would bet money against all of the $1000 systems at my school. The Comp Kickers are very very attractive looking to people who know and dont know about stereos. Sure it isnt the hardest hitting subwoofer out there BUT it is very clean and sharp hitting compared to a ton of other peoples subs. What was your view on these subs? did you like them? did the price seem unreal to you?


If anyone would like to see my subs in action just message me and ill show you my videos


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## ranger91

i wasnt very impressed with them,so i went and got the L7 Solobaric 10" Kickers and those blew away the comps i had,but then i stumbled upon an Eclipse 12" sub,that 1 sub by itself destroyed anything i have had to date.


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## jkem21cb




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *ranger91* /forum/post/21531901
> 
> 
> i wasnt very impressed with them,so i went and got the L7 Solobaric 10" Kickers and those blew away the comps i had,but then i stumbled upon an Eclipse 12" sub,that 1 sub by itself destroyed anything i have had to date.



ya one reason i chose the comp kickers is because i was looking for a budget system that fits my needs. Once upon a time in my king cab pickup i had 1 12" MTX(forgot what sub model sorry) along with a 300watt MTX thunder amp and that bumped HARD. what about the comp kickers did you not like? i noticed when i really try to push their capabilities it became slightly distorted and that is one thing i do not like about my kickers


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## cubdenno

Gents,

If I might add in some subwoofer insight.


The Kicker comp is a decent well made "budget" subwoofer. You can get excellent performance out of them.


Now as Ranger has had to deal with me on this stuff it may be a repeat of the same.


The performance of a subwoofer is dictated entirely by the enclosure and how it couples to the acoustics of what particular vehicle it is in. A sub system may sound great in one vehicle and just so so in another.




Now ,if you are having issues at a certain point with your subs, you need to determine what in fact the issues are.


What type of enclosure are you using Sealed, ported, bandpass, horn, etc?


What is the model, coil DCR and wiring configuration of the sub/s?


See, what I have found in dealing with people and sub systems (especially teens with their first system and for the record, I have a 19 year old son and 15 year old nephew as well as their multitude of friends who always end up at my house to work on and tune their particular set ups) can be summed up simply in a few different problems.


1:To little power or to few/small of a subwoofer.

They are trying to beat the laws of physics with what they are wanting. The person is working on a very limited budget and trying to get window cracking results with 500 watts and under or a single 8" sub in a tiny sealed enclosure


2: Wrong enclosure.

Sealed enclosure are the easiest and most forgiving of designs. There are trade offs. You want low end? Go ported. You will get louder and lower (there are trade offs as well but I am trying to go simple here) on less power in most circumstances.


3: Wrong settings on head unit/amp.

You have bass boost maxed, crossover set incorrectly etc... Usually trying again to get the most out of a limited system, as well as not understanding what a bass boost control really means. We have all been there











Can expand more but just wanted to touch on these three.


jkem, have you reset to zero any boost functions of the head unit and amp?

Set gain on amp at about half. See if distortion levels drop. Sounds to me like you are either clipping the head unit or overdriving the subs. Am guessing the amp though. This will affect a bit of the low end. Especially if you are running a sealed enclosure. If ported, check and verify that you have a SSF and that it is on. If you are unloading the subs below the tuning frequency of a ported box, you can eventually damage the subs and it will also not sound good.


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## jkem21cb

cubdenno, yes i have. i have the gain a turned a little bit below "normal" so it hits nice and tight. i aslo thought about putting in a small port for it. i REALLY like the nice clean hard hits (when the volume isnt up much) but will adding small ports affect the hits much??


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## cubdenno




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jkem21cb* /forum/post/21539137
> 
> 
> cubdenno, yes i have. i have the gain a turned a little bit below "normal" so it hits nice and tight. i aslo thought about putting in a small port for it. i REALLY like the nice clean hard hits (when the volume isnt up much) but will adding small ports affect the hits much??



jkem,


There is more to it than just adding ports or cutting holes. You need to first determine what the interior volume of the enclosure is. tuning a port is based entirely on port area port length and enclosure volume and the relation between them. In other words, for a given enclosure violume and port area, to get the tuning frequency of 30 hertz you need a specific port length. Change anything and tuning frequency changes which causes all sorts of issues. And enclosure volume is net which means you have to take into account the displacement of woofer and port as that reduces the net volume or increases it if you add or reduce the port length.


Gets complicated. Requires some math.


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## jkem21cb

cubdenno, ok thank you. is there another website with a walkthrough or How-to on this?


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## cubdenno

I use WinISD pro alpha

http://www.linearteam.dk/default.asp...load=winisdpro 


The easier version is this:

http://www.linearteam.dk/default.aspx?download=winisd 


Decent article from Car audio with them also using WinISD.

http://caraudiomag.com/articles/bene...ting-port-size 


Anyway, give these a read. Will try to offer more as needed.


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