Quote:
Originally Posted by oneflyryd
Here is the Crutchfield page on them. They are discontinued but at least you can see the specs on them. I also found this pic of the back side. Mounting depth is 2 5/16 I am not sure how much depth we actually have in the enclosures though. Any thoughts VP. I think Technic posted something about these a while back.
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I found a brand new set at eBay for $110 and replaced my SWS-8 with these SSMB8.
Installation:
- they fit the OEM enclusures only with a 0.5" spacer, as the wide magnet hits the sloped bottom of the enclosure. Therefore the grill has to use a spacer as well of about 0.25" and the carpet under the seat rail has to be cut or the woofer cone will hit it. Once the seats are installed it looks like factory, though.
Setup:
- the first thing noticed is that I have to set my PDX4.150 gain to minimum, compared with a 10 o'clock setting for the SWS-8. That much of a sensitivity these SSMB8 have over the SWS-8. Band pass setting in my bit one.1 is set now to 40-200Hz from 30-150Hz. Sub bass is now being handled exclusively by an ID10 sub in the trunk using VP Electricity's E90 enclosure.
Sound:
- these drivers sound much better and even louder than the SWS-8 at midbass all the way to 200Hz. There's a much better definition and impact of the whole bass spectrum with these midbass and the sub than what I used to have with the SWS-8 and the sub.
However, remove the sub and they do not sound as great as the SWS-8 alone. The sub punch with the SWS-8 still is better for me, and with some tuning it can fake some midbass as well. And that's what I can conclude between a SWS-8 and a midbass driver: the SWS-8 will sound great with a processor/EQ, nice sub punch and decent midbass. Remove the processor and the SWS-8 sucks at midbass, which is most of the complaints in this forum comes from. Use a dedicated midbass driver and it really sucks at subbass (the SSMB8 simply pops and cracks at anything in the 30Hz-40Hz range) but excel at midbass without a processor/EQ.
This the second SSMB8 installation (front doors in a 2007 VW MKV GTI was the first one) that I really like, and they don't disappoint at midbass. Just don't use them as subs...
