In my last car (2002 Escape) I had an MTX thunder form box. In it was a Single thunder 4500 12" sub rated for 225 watts. This would be about a $75 sub new. I was driving this with an alpine 140 watt mono amp. I was more than pleased with the amount of bass this set up produced but I understand this was a relatively minimalistic system.
I buy most of my stuff used off of Craig's list so I can not always get exactly what I want so I was wondering what would happen if I took the exact same amp and hooked it to a sub that would cost $300-400 new and was rated for say 1000 watts? Would it sound better because I have a much more capable sub or would it sound worse because I would be so under driving the sub.
Lets look also at say 5.25 speakers and compare say Alpine type s and type R. The s's are $60 a pair and rated for 55 watts. The R's are $120 a pair and rated for 90 watts. If you drive these with a 40 watt amp which should sound better?
In general, amplifier power has nothing (or very little) to do with how speakers sound. Better speakers sound better regardless of the amplifier. In the case of your Alpine example, the type S will sound like Type S and the Type R will sound like Type R no matter what amp you use. Buy the speakers you like the most.
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Support the12volt.comyou will get better results by making sure the sub and the box are compatible with each other. if you plan on using the tunderform box and just installing a different sub then you could get better or worse results than you already have depending on if the sub and box play nice with each other.
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