Mid life bassists

[Sloppy hamfingers]

So, I never had a box, amp, or subs in my teens but always wanted them, this Xmas Santa was pretty good to me. I’m sure plenty of subs are bigger, more bad ass and kick harder, amps out there push many more watts, but I feel pretty good with my setup, now I wanna build a nice box for my 2-jbl cx 1200 subs. 250 watts rms, 4ohm svc from Best Buy and their sweet sale during Xmas for $29 per sub! Like I say, I’m aware that these subs aren’t gonna blow windows or impress the major bass guys, but two 12’s and a brand new alpine mrv500 mono 500 watts rms will be more than enough for my ears. I got jbl 6.5 components I’m hoping to be able to run directly off my deck that I am still deciding on, I have a single din alpine but looking at the new 7” nex from pioneer. I have an iPhone 6 and an Amazon tablet so I’m limited to the box building programs or at least the really nice ones ive seen anyway. The subs are rated for 35hz and hopefully I can accomplish that low of bass, I’d rather build a box from 3/4 mdf with a port on the side the height of my enclosure, but have seen some nice boxes for sale that’s built already, would that be a mistake? My subs require 1.5 cubic ft per sub so I’ll be looking at a 3 cube box more or less but between all the calculators out there I’ve basically just got confused. I’d like a decently simple program or calculator where I could enter all my information and get a cut list and drawing in the end, without spending a whole bunch of $.. I have all or rather enough tools to complete a good box build, I’m looking at clamps and nail/staple guns for a new compressor now, just got a table saw and either gonna get a small router or jig saw. My car is an 02 civic lx and the entire trunk is empty, I can use the majority of the space minus the spare tire, and probably gonna be doing some sound mat as well. I appreciate any box help or good advice on a program or website I can build my box from, look forward to getting started but want to make sure it’s right. 

[anr102990]

I would recommend building your own box. If you can, download Torres box tuning calculator on a computer and start there. It’s not that difficult to learn, pretty straight forward. Measure the dimensions of your trunk, and play with the dimensions on Torres until you come up with something that fits. In my opinion, for daily music application , what’s worked best for me is port tuning somewhere around 32 to 36 hz and around 14 sq inches of port area per net cubic foot of interior volume. I believe you will enjoy designing and then building your own box and the satisfaction of doing it yourself is in my opinion, a great feeling. Also, the “right” enclosure will definitely bring out the very best of your subs along with tuning your amp correctly. Good luck man. 

[reedal]

Torres calculator gives you a good basic starting point for enclosure design, but it's limited. the programs that do what you want done, cut sheet and all, cost $$. winISD is a good free software that can provide graphs of your enclosure's output, port velocity, frequency response, and some other things, but takes some time to get the hang of. there are a few great enclosure designers on this forum who will help you with a design for free, and there's even a couple who offer their services of building/shipping the enclosure for you, for a price of course.

[Sloppy hamfingers]

I would gladly accept help on the design part of it, but I have invested probably more than I should have in wood working tools, so I feel pretty confident in my ability to read blueprints and perform the build, but like I say, the thing I’m lacking is a windows based laptop or computer to download those programs, I’ve tried with the android and Apple play store apps but they’re either too confusing or they want you to buy something to get the rest of what you need. Now that sounds like I’m being cheap but honestly I’m not, it’s just none of the apps I found was anything I’d care to invest in after I download and seen the free or lite version, they all pretty much lacked in detail. I’ve Done some machining work so prints wouldn’t be an issue, but the calculators was really confusing when it came to the ports, I can’t figure out why you put in port dimensions if u don’t know them, do you just guess at it until u get the proper cubic feet? Seems like a few years back I was gonna build a box and had to input all the subwoofer specs, Thiele and all that, it’s definitely not something I’m familiar with so it’d be great to find someone with a civic sedan that cud help me out with designs. The sub papers show round port dimensions per sub, do I double it all for two? There’s just so many ways a guy could get it all wrong, it’d be great to see plans and a cut sheet. That may be too easy or asking for too much but I’m all for it if someone has time. 

[ckeeler11]

I would start a new thread asking for help on box design. Make sure you include in your post  subs, amp you have, vehicle, and dimensions you have to work with. There will be someone that can help with Box desgn. Joe X is great if he sees it.