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Well guys please help me make up my mind. Should i mount my amp on top or on the back of my box? which would be better? Please dont reply saying neither because i am not worried about the system getting "stolen." I am thinking about mounting it on the back.... but what are the advantages of it being on the top??

its a profile ap600 amp powering a mtx 4500 12

I know its not the best, but its good for me
note: amp is not fan cooled

 
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I have 2 12 in pioneers with a 760 watt pioneer amp and i have my amp mounted on the back of my back seats. it works perfect.

 
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I have mine on the back seat also

 

Mine is mounted on top of my box. No problems with it. I put it there because i thought the box would be more stable, rather than having the weight hanging.

 
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I heard something about the vibrations form the subs is not good on amplifiers. I never mounted mine on the boxes.

 
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Back seat most definitely looks the best....

 
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mine is bolted behind my box. no prob here

 
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I had mine under my driver seat....until it blew....it was a Soxy Xplod 800W monoblock........i had no problems with under there....very clean and less distortion too....since it was closer to the source.......

 
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kind sir, i highly doubt that the underseat location of your amplifier changed anything to do with the apparent sound quality and distortion characteristics of your sub-bass

1 - the human ear can really only detect levels of distortion in sub 80hz frequencies when it reaches 7%-10% distortion. 4 feet of signal cable, unless you're using popsicle sticks, or something of that conductive matter, would never make an audible difference, if you think it did, psychoacoustics. anything you are hearing which may present itself as distortion, such as harmonics, coloration, frequency response anomalies, and resonance, are functions of the amplifier's internals, and/or the woofer itself, and/or the enclosure, and/or the vehicle resonance, blah blah blah the list continues ad infinitum...
regardless of which source it is, the location, and/or 4-5 extra feet of signal cable, have absolutely no effect on such afformentioned characteristics

2 - assuming it did lower the distortion a thousandth of a percent, (again i re-reference the fact that the human ear's sensitivity to levels of distortion in that sonic region is absolutely horrendous), you still have a back seat, a rear deck, and a billion other resonances and membranes and such to compete with, so it would take a good bit of distortion to be noticed from such a distance and through so many obstacles.

3 - class D amplifiers, (with two or three exceptions), have such horrible sound characteristics that they are only used for bass, hence my third referencing to the human ear's sensitivity of low frequency, because of the way they reproduce a sound wave, how they sacrifice sonic integrity for pure efficiency (75%-90% efficiency). They use a pulse width modulation to create a quasi-sound wave a chopped garble with almost half the information being badly recreated, as opposed to the pure sound wave from class a (only 5-10% efficient), and the almost entirely pure sound wave of your standard a/b amplifier (50% efficient)
just for pure reference, there only exist 2 or 3 pure class a amplifiers for the automotive environment, all only capable of 5 - 15 watts rms, and with a current draw of something like 100 amps just to do those 5 to 15 watts.
imagine an amplifier so damn inefficient, that 10 watts of power would draw all the power your alternator could possibly provide.

4 - assuming somehow, through some scientific anomaly, your vehicle indeed was capable of such a feat, the amp in question, a sony class D monoblock, has not the sound re-creation capabilities to properly display such a change in THD or noise or anything

in conclusion, i shall sum up my three points

1 - we cant hear such small changes in distortion when talking about bass

2 - even if we could, the automobile environment is so friggin horrendous for sound re-creation that one of a million factors would interfere with the proper hearing of such things

3 - class d amps sound like *** to begin with, but we use them because our ears suck at hearing bass

4 - sony amps, especially the xplod line, suck *****, hence even if 4 feet of rca's really really did affect it that much, the amp itself would introduce so much distortion that it would negate the gains

 
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Back of the seat.

Its easy to remove and re-install the box with no tools. To re-install the amp every time sucks.

 
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Mount it on the back seat. It makes it easy to tweak and fix cause you can flip the seat and not have to worry about moving the woofer and box. Just do what I did and get a piece of wood, put it under the back seat cover, screw it in with some metal screws, and then mount it.

 
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lets see... it depends on where the adjustments are on the amp.. if its on one of the sides then mounting it on top of box would make it easier.. if its on the top of amp then being on back of box would probably be better... both ways doesnt make ur beat sound any better or look any better.. this will just make it easier for you to adjust. i have heard of the vibration being bad for the amp but either way if you have beat, the amps will be vibrating a whole lot... personally i like to mount the amp where it would be easy to adjust and where it will look nice.. im trying to think of how to mount all my amps and stuff right now... i should be putting my beat together soon..


oh and i noticed you said the amp is not fan cooled? well heres what i seen some ppl do.. take off the cover under the amp and drill a hole thru the box where you going to mount the amp... bolt down the amp covering the hole... that way the subs will push air thru the hole and cool the amps.. hahahahaa.. not something i would do cause it will affect the way ur system sound.. but it works

 
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http://www.lakesideaudio.com/index.p...=1&key=3&hit=1 on an amp rack right in front of the rear seats backside.

 
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his x-plod "exploded"

I can't help but chuckle...

I've mounted amps to my sub boxes since 2003 and never had a problem with it...

 
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got mine behind the box so if need be to take it out then there u go it all comes rite out no problems yet

 
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I've only had one issue mounting to the back of a sub box, the amp was huge and my friend didn't want to deal with an amp rack. Ended up shaking three of the large capacitors right off the circuit board. I ordered new ones and fixed it but we decided to go with an amp rack and he hasn't had any problems since. This was a very large Rockford BD amp with two RF Power 12's so probably not applicable to your situation.

 
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the vibrations could screw up the circuits. shake fittings loose etc...

 
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but have you seen it happen???? Would the vibrations from the subwoofer itself not also impact?

 
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Question: The back seat of my gf's sedan doesn't fold, do I have to remove the whole seat to do this? and is the back seat cover accessible via zipper or....?

For my install this weekend I was thinking about mounting the amp in the corner of the trunk, behind one of the tail lights with a board, but rain season is coming soon so don't want the amp to get soaked each time I open the trunk in the rain, the back seat was what I always wantd to do.


I.F.

 
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Maybe I missed something- arent you putting this in a civic.. the seats do fold...(stick the key in the rear deck and twist!). If her seats dont fold, you can still mount it there, actually thats an even better reason to mount it there- wont get in the way when you do want to fold the seats down for like a bike or something big.

I could even see a custom fitting in the spare tire well, but who knows if you wanna get a little complicated like that.

 
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Hmm..then I must be missing how the the seat folds. I remeber we were going fishing once and I wanted to put my rods in her car but couldn't figure out how to get the seat to fold, so we just assume it doesn't

"stick the key in the rear deck and twist", is there a lock? I'm gonna try tonight....if it folds I will kick my self in the ***** twice.

Thanks for the tip.

I.F.

 
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yep they fold... try it*

 
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Haha..
allright dude heres the DIY for folding your rear seats!!

1) unlock your passengers side door
2) unfold the seat, or climb in the back (coupe/sedan/whatever) just get in the back.
3) locate the center seat, strattle it like a stripper.
4) Now, make sure you have your key in hand.
5) Locate the key'd entry on on the horizontal plane in front of you.
6) Twisting it to the left unlocks the left hand side i believe, and vise versa.
7) Then (the tricky part), when the key is twisted, give a slight yank on the seat via the headrest. The seat should come down in all its glory. Watch out so u dont hit urself in the stomach!!

Oh.. a note.. If you want to open the rear seats from the trunk do it like this... first, since ur probably going to do this tonight, grab a flashlight. open your trunk and crawl in on your back. Take a good look around, you should be able to see the key'd entry mechanism and how it works when its twisted... there is a few cross bars and make up the whole contraption. If you wiggle them around it makes sense. Anyways- there should be some glow in the Dark tabs that stick out. They might even say pull, there is two of them- one for each side. Go ahead and yank them and the seat should pop out, then give it a little push and more glory!

I hope that (^^^^^^) helps, if not- I can run down to the parking garage and snap some shots for ya buddy.

Lemme know if that works, their might be something wrong with the mechanism, but hopefully not- its not overly complicated if it does need fixing.

 
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Man put on the back of the box if those are your only choices/ on top will probably get scratched alot more when you are pulling them in and out. I built a panel and mine sits to the side all the way to the back(kinda shows it off), but anyway good luck

 
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You can put the amplifier under the trunk floor in front of the spare tyre. You may have to move the scisor jack for it to fit there. I have had my amp there for awhile now, nice and hidden.

 
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I thought about that spot too, even made a rack for it, but did you put a fan in there? It doesn't get a lot of air inside. How did your amp hold up during the summer?


Triz, thanks. gf is not home yet so I"m gonna try it a little later, but that sounds pretty simple, just never thought of it, I think it's because I asked my gf if the seat folds? she then says Honda salesman told her no, so I never bother to even look into this. When I use to drive a Eclipse the back seats have a tap to pull on, then voila, glory.........

 
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Whats the best way to mount the amp to the back of the seats without killing resale value? When I eventually sell my car I dont want there to be any noticeable holes. Or is this inevitable?

 
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Sorry brother im not to keen on electrical so I cant be of much help!

 
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^^^ why post then???

Anyways I think you should mount the amp to the back of the seats.
-Able to route some of the wires into the seat and out the bottom for a neater look
-Easy access to change amp settings, just fold down seat and voila there it is
-Harder to steal as opposed to it being mounted on the box(as you already mentioned)

 
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did the seats fold!!???