Tim “The Toolman” Taylor Taught Me To Add More Power

Levi here, writing a post to thank Art for donating his old subwoofer and giving me something to do for a weekend or two.
Art told me to take his old sub from our parents house to use at my home, but when I hooked it up no lights came on and no sound came out. I pulled out the amp and saw that some components were fried but after I replaced them it still didn’t work. The fuse would blow immediately after I plugged it in. That’s when I discovered that the voice coil on the driver was melted and I decided to rebuild the whole thing.
Avery is in all of the pictures because she wants to help me any time that I take on a project around the house. Here is the sub enclosure before the changes with a 10” driver that is mostly foam and a 120W amp.

Avery helped me enlarge the opening for the driver to fit in this beast that I have had sitting around for a few years. After each cut with the jigsaw, Avery would pull her fingers out of her ears and ask if I was done yet. She had to be right next to me every step of the way; holding the screws for me or holding the glued pieces in place as they dried. A little side by side comparison of the surface area and magnets on the two drivers.

I picked up a nice little power switching 300W amp from parts-express pretty cheap. I also scavenged some gnarly wire from an old sub box that was labeled 12 GA but looked a lot closer to 10 GA. Most of the work on this project went into converting the square opening on the back of the enclosure into a rectangle of different dimensions and framing in the amp on the inside of the box while working around the internal bracing. The great thing about working with MDF is that you just glue all of it together; no fasteners required.

All finished, looking and sounding good. The new driver is so large that the old screen won’t fit on the front anymore, but I like to see its face lurking in the corner. It gives a good rumble during the movies. To test it out I put in my copy of Step Into Liquid and went to the last scene where the guys are tow in surfing at the Cortes Bank. It isn’t the greatest bass soundtrack but it is really cool to have the deep bass match the awesome visuals of the monster waves crashing down.
Thanks to Art for donating his old sub enclosure, Avery and I enjoyed reworking it.