Subwoofer Level Control w/ Small Car

[Sean Don]

Hello all. New to car audio stuff so bare w/ me. I've got an older
Panasonic CD player head unit. And, I had no choice but to upgrade my
speakers (factory speakers were horrible). Finally, I got an Audiobahn
self-powered 10 inch subwoofer tube (ATB10AT), which is compact enough
for my small 97 Toy Tercel...

Here's the thing. The sub could have remote bass boost, but I leave
boost on zero dB anyway - things start sounding nasty if I turn it up,
and my car rattles too much. With some songs, if the volume is too
high on the head-unit, bass sounds more like a "thud" than a "boom",
but would otherwise sound fine if the volume to the sub was lowered.
FYI, I've got the the sub's low pass filter around 100 Hz and the gain
about half-way. Drop the gain too much, and it's no good for other
songs.

What's the best way to setup remote subwoofer gain and/or volume
control?

I found Alpine sell's remote gain control knobs, but it doesn't look
compatible w/ my sub tube.

Would it be worth replacing the head unit w/ one that has sub woofer
level control? Alternatively, if I got another amp, to power my
regular speakers, could it somehow be used to help control the
subwoofer's level gain and/or volume separately?

[Sean Scott]

"Sean Don" > wrote in message ...
>
> Hello all. New to car audio stuff so bare w/ me. I've got an older
> Panasonic CD player head unit. And, I had no choice but to upgrade my
> speakers (factory speakers were horrible). Finally, I got an Audiobahn
> self-powered 10 inch subwoofer tube (ATB10AT), which is compact enough
> for my small 97 Toy Tercel...
>
> Here's the thing. The sub could have remote bass boost, but I leave
> boost on zero dB anyway - things start sounding nasty if I turn it up,
> and my car rattles too much. With some songs, if the volume is too
> high on the head-unit, bass sounds more like a "thud" than a "boom",
> but would otherwise sound fine if the volume to the sub was lowered.
> FYI, I've got the the sub's low pass filter around 100 Hz and the gain
> about half-way. Drop the gain too much, and it's no good for other
> songs.
>
> What's the best way to setup remote subwoofer gain and/or volume
> control?
>

Buy a higher end HU and you can usually control the output signal with them.

> I found Alpine sell's remote gain control knobs, but it doesn't look
> compatible w/ my sub tube.
>
> Would it be worth replacing the head unit w/ one that has sub woofer
> level control? Alternatively, if I got another amp, to power my
> regular speakers, could it somehow be used to help control the
> subwoofer's level gain and/or volume separately?
>

[bobb]

All u need is to wire a 10 kohm (audio taper) potentiometer for vol
control. You are taking the signal from line out of course.


>--------------------+
\
/
\------------------------->
HU /
\ SUB
/
>--------------------+------------------------->

[MOSFET]

> All u need is to wire a 10 kohm (audio taper) potentiometer for vol
> control. You are taking the signal from line out of course.
>
>
> >--------------------+
> \
> /
> \------------------------->
> HU /
> \ SUB
> /
> >--------------------+------------------------->
>

I did exactly this and it works great. I bought my potentiometer at Radio
Shack. You will also need to buy a knob to attach to the potentiometer,
that too can be bought at Radio Shack (and they have a pretty large
selection so you can get one to match the decor of your dash). You just
wire it up, drill a hole in your dash, mount it, attach the knob, and you're
set. If you run into problems wiring it, feel free to Email me.

MOSFET

[DA]

What would you wire this to? I see an earlier post that says line out.
Does that mean the RCA's out from the stereo? How would you do
that? If someone could explain a little further, I think this could
help me as well. Thanks.

DA

[MOSFET]

> What would you wire this to? I see an earlier post that says line out.
> Does that mean the RCA's out from the stereo? How would you do
> that?

Yes, you use the line out jacks (RCA's). Of course, you are going to have
to cut off the ends of some RCA cables to get to the bare wire.

Well, the first thing you need to know is that your sub is (almost always)
mono so what I did was sum the left and right channel of my sub out (you
will turn four wires into two wires). With me so far? The potentiometer
has three inputs (terminals) and bobb's diagram illustrates how they should
be hooked up. The way I did it was I hooked up the negative wire of the sub
out and the negative wire to the amp input to one of the terminals (get it?
So one of the terminals will have two wires attached). Then the postive
wire of the sub out attaches to the second terminal and the positive amp
input wire attaches to the third.

It's a little tricky trying to explain it, it's easier to just show a
person. Also, I don't remember exactly which terminal was which (I did this
some time ago) so you may need to experiment just a bit. Perhaps an EE
could chime in with a better illustration. The folks at Radio Shack are
usually very helpful and can explain further what to do.


Hope this helps,

MOSFET