Leaderboard

Ok, so now that the "cap" is out of the bag, I know everybody that is serious about SPL competition has lots of questions. Well, hopefully this helps. Q: Where can I buy these sexy things? A: Loose Supercells are a “direct to consumer” item only, so you will not see them listed on our website, or for sale at any dealer, or online store. Q: Why not? A: Because we said so... Seriously though, ultracaps can be very dangerous in the hands of an inexperienced user. For this reason, loose cells will be sold only to those who are pre-qualified and are already a part of, or willing to be a part of Team XS Power. Along with the standard team agreement, those who wish to purchase cells, will also have to sign a consent waiver to use this product. Q: How much are they? A: The same price as all the other ultracaps, and yes… there will be bulk discounts. We will provide bulk pricing details to those who are qualified. Q: How soon can I buy them? A: We are accepting orders now, however, the first shipments will not be ready for delivery until the end of January, 2015. Q: What makes them any different than any other ultracap out there? A: Nothing. They work equally as well as any other ultracap we’ve tested… they just look way cooler. Q: Why should I buy them instead? A: Because we said so… but in all seriousness, our customers have been asking for us to introduce some new technology, so here it is. And there is plenty more to come! Q: What are the benefits of using them? A: Ultracaps can help reduce the strain on your batteries, helping them last longer. With a properly sized cap bank, you can minimize the effects of voltage loss on your electrical system and improve the overall efficiency of charge/discharge. Q: Can I use only caps and no batteries? A: Yes, but we do not recommend it because there are excellent benefits that both the cap and the battery can offer, so why not take advantage of both and save the most money? After over a year and a half of testing, our recommendation is to use one ultracap bank for every 50Ah of battery capacity for burps, or one ultracap bank for every 100-120Ah for music. Q: What is an ultracap bank? A: If you have to ask this question, you’re probably not qualified to use them. But just to be safe, 6 cells must be used for a 12V bank (16.2V max), and 7 cells must be used for a 16V bank (18.9V max), as each cell is 2.7V each. Q: Do we recommend these instead of batteries? A: No, batteries are still the simplest and most affordable way to get the power you need for most users. However, for those who are serious about competition, ultracaps can help to increase SPL scores in short bursts or short duration. Q: I already have some ultracaps from another company, can I use these in parallel with my other caps too? A: Yes, but as with anything in SPL competition, the more consistency you can build into the system, the better. Q: I’m too scared to work with raw ultracaps, will you offer anything for me in the future? A: Yes, the release of the XS Power SuperCell is mainly to showcase the component parts of our upcoming SuperCell Modules. We have been working on these for nearly a year and a half, and hope to be able to have them ready for official release this summer. The modules will be available through our normal dealer base and will be safe and easy to use for users of any experience level. What do you do next? Well, if you want to buy SuperCells, email us at info (at) xspowerbatteries.com We will do our best to keep up with your requests. If you don't want Supercells, stay tuned for other exciting new products coming along this year!

This write up was done for the Maxwell's, but everything still applies as I assume Scottie's are just as awesome. There's been a lot of talk about supercaps on here lately. There is a ton of confusion and a lot of questions about them. I thought I'd share what I know and let other discuss them here. First, and let me just get this out of the way... caps store electricity on plates. Batteries produce electricity through a chemical reaction. Caps use different plates, one with a positive charge (loses electrons) and one with a negative (gains electrons). The greater the difference in the charge (usually through the size of the plates), the greater potential for energy discharge. A great example of the way caps work and the potential energy (and the biggest one) is lightning. Where the earth is one plate and the clouds are the other. What are they? The ones everyone is using are either Maxwell 2.5v (black) or 2.7v (blue) single cell capacitors. You have to series them to achieve our operating voltages. When you series, you gain operating voltage. A bank of (6) 2.5v series to 15v. A bank of (7) of the black ones is 17.5v. A bank of (6) of the 2.7v blue ones is 16.2v. Now, when you series, you gain voltage, but you lose capacity. These supercaps have a retarded amount of capacity. Even the largest "car audio" capacitors are 20 farads and I've seen maybe 50F. Each one of the supercaps is either 2,600 farads (black ones) or 3,000F. Yes... three thousand farads. That's a lot of juice. But like I said, putting them into series'd banks, you lose capacity. Double the voltage, halve the capacity. So a bank of (6) 2.5v/2,600F caps is 15v/433F. That's still a ton. (6) 2.7v/3,000F is 16.2v/500F. A bank of (7) of the 2.5v ones gets you 17.5v but you lose capacity down to 370F. Recap... (6) 2.5v/2,600F = 15v/433F (7) 2.5v/2,600F = 17.5v/371F (6) 2.7v/3,000F = 16.2v/500F (7) 2.7v/3,000F = 18.9v/428F What makes these different than "regular" caps? Well, besides the insane amount of capacity, the ESR is a big deal here. ESR is basically internal resistance. The best and lowest ESR of a traditional cap I've seen is 0.017ohms. What's that mean? Well, if you apply 100A to something with a 0.017ohm resistance, you will get a 1.7v drop. That's not good. Triple that amperage and you get triple the resistance. 0.017 X 300A = 5.1v drop. Yikes. The max ESR of a Maxwell super cap (also known as an UltraCap or BoostCap) is .29 milliohms. That's 0.00029. Yeah... that's awesome. It's also why they charge and discharge so damn fast. A "Joule" is a watt-second. 1 Joule can produce 1 watt for 1 second. The formula for determining the total joules stored in a capacitor is very simple. We take one half the cap value in farads and multiply it times the squared charge voltage. So, let's say we have a bank of (6) black ones. That's 15v/433F. 433/2 = 216.5 15x15 = 225 216.5x225 = 48,712.5 joules. That's 48,000 watts for 1 second. Wow. or 24,000w for 2 seconds. And so on. Now, that doesn't take into account our operating voltage of >10v or so. If you take that into account, it's more like 6,000-8,000 joules. But that's still a lot. And that's just a single bank. Caps for burps. Freaking awesome. Highly recommed. And in my testing, each bank is good for ~ 2.5-3kw to stay above 13v or so on a 3 sec burp. More banks, more capacity, lower voltage drop. Caps plus batts for burps. Testing shows very little to no gain on burps with caps+batts. On 12v. I have seen someone gain by using caps+batts on a 16v system, but that may be an isolated case. Caps + batts for daily. Awesome. Highly recommend if your electrical is up to snuff or close already. Great addition to batts. A word on safety... These things will mess you up. They charge and discharge at a rate you will not be accustomed to. If they are charged, they will stay charged. And as we've talked about, that's a lot of f'n juice chillin. And it will bite you in the ass. You also DO NOT want to hook these up to a batt when they are not near the battery's resting voltage. They will try to draw sooooo much out of the batt at an alarming rate that it's basically like dead shorting your battery and you will weld that terminal to whatever it's touching. Also... DO NOT OVERCHARGE THESE THINGS!! I can not stress that enough. Bad things can and will happen. Blue ones. 2.7v, 3,000 farads. Black ones. 2.5v, 2,600 farads. My banks. And feel free to share pics of yours. These are (7) cap, 17.5v banks

Kevin had a DC 5.0k for sale and I was pretty interested for a while. I live in another state but was going to be in his area on my way to and from somewhere and asked if I could pick the amp up if it would save me any $ and maybe he could give me and my family a demo of the van. He lowered the price by a certain amount since the price he had listed the amp for included shipping, and came through with an awesome demo. If you haven't seen that thing in person, as awesome as the videos are, they do it no justice. On top of all that, he changed his schedule around and rushed some things so the van would be "show ready" which by no means did he have to do. We got our demo on the way to our destination and I had not yet purchased the amp because I had to make sure there was room left in the budget. Before I departed CA I hit Kev's paypal with his lowered asking price for the amp and we ended up not getting together again so he tells me not to worry, that he would ship it the next business day on his dime. He shipped it as promised and the item was packaged well and marked fragile, and glass do not break. I would not hesitate to buy from him again. Customer service: 15/10 Condition of product as described in for sale add: Yes Packaging of product: 10/10 Easy to do business with: Yes Shipped when and how promised: Yes

I have a few video's to upload in the coming days....but here is a few pics i took during my stay in Vegas. I could have taken more but there is only so much car audio stuff and then millions of other crap like phone chargers, tv's etc that are cool to look at but not necessarily great pics. Anyway, my week started with some new headphones i got at the airport. I got my original Sol Republic's a few years back at the same place and i loved them so much i decided to stick with the brand. Especially since the new ones are wireless (they are Tracks Air). So far i love these too! and the phone integration (bluetooth) works great too! Me and Mark from CAF at the Mobile Solutions booth Me and the MAN - Brian from Mobile Solutions. Nice to see him showing the product at his booth although the future is uncertain at this point.....but still good to see some support. Me and Psyph finally gettin' it in It was my first night in town so i didn't wanna over do it. Only had about 5 drinks that night.....3 of them doubles lol. Felt ok the next day though! Ahhhh the new SMD v2. Took a little tour of Ascendant Audio while in town. Tasty!

Hertz Audio Fiat 500 "Pole Dance"....Can you drive it? i don't know. Doesn't look like it drives....but i don't know. I just filmed it because it looked crazy

Yes, of course... We will elaborate a lot more when we are ready to release the info ;-)

The modules are definitely the safe and easy way to go for customers who do not know how, or care to screw around with building cap banks. Installation is as simple and easy as installing a battery, and little to no risk of injury or damage during installation. We are working as quickly as we can so we can release additional info on the first module.

mmm

Great work ! Hopefully one day i can make it out west and hear it

We have a few things that work against us in terms of offering a cheaper product. 1. We use 100% butyl. Butyl (which is synthetic) is expensive compared to the cheaper alternatives that other companies use. 2. Our products are made in the USA. Keeping manufacturing here costs a lot more than going overseas or importing it from China, Russia, or Italy (the most common places that produce these materials). Of course the payoff of having it made here are HUGE since we can control the quality of the product better than most. There are a few other reasons that add to the cost of our products, but I'm not going to get into those. We are always working on keeping the cost down as much as possible. Jeff, FatMat recommends using lighter fluid. Peel up an edge of the FatMat and apply some lighter fluid on the sheet metal and slowly peel it off. Not a fan of this method. A safer, cheaper, and more effective method is to use a heat gun or even a hair drier to get the FatMat nice and warm and just slowly peel it off using a scrapper or putty knife to help. Once the bulk of the material is off, clean the surface with some acetone or paint thinner and you'll be good to go.

I had some fatmat on my doors a while back and after a while, it would randomly have air pockets.. I then peeled it all down (which was fairly easy since it lost its stickyness) and added just 1 layer damplifier pro.. night and day difference