Let me begin by saying that if you have never built a box before, then you should really consider getting some experience under your belt before giving Decware's 'Wicked One' a go. The design is complex as it calls for very very precise cuts, angle cutting, huge patience and forethought.

The results however are extremely rewarding

What you will need -

Consumables:

- 2.4m * 1.2m of 18mm MDF ($63)
- 2 Tubes of liquid nails ($8)
- 100 36mm to 45mm chipboard screws ($7)
- 10 Hours of your precious Saturday
- Speaker Wire ($5)
- Two 10" Subwoofers (sony penatagons in this case $75 each)

Non Consumables:

- Two saw horses
- Jigsaw (that allows you to adjust the angle of the cut)
- Table Saw
- Pencil
- Tape measure
- L ruler
- Drill with assorted bits

SAFETY GEAR IS A MUST.

When cutting mdf, both GOGGLES and A GOOD FACE MASK/RESPIRATOR are CRITICAL for your health and saftey.

Link to the Decware Plans

The woofer is a Sony XS-L101P5 350wrms 4 ohm single VC - any pair of 10" subs will do really. The box can be made to sound better for particular subs by playing with the volume in the sealed section.
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Now that we've read the plans and have all our equipment, let's get to it.

First step is to follow the instuction in the Decware link, it goes through a step by step guide as to where to draw the lines for your horn, which will be where the mdf walls go later on. You end up with this:
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My first thought when I did this was: "Bloody brilliant, that really narrows down where the walls are supposed to go." Took a bit to work out (the intraweb is your friend).

To make it easier for you, Voila.
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And to make it easier later on (read when it comes to screwing the top on) I suggest you lay your top board on top of your bottom and transpose, AS ACCURATELY AS POSSIBLE, the lines where the walls are going to go - this may take 10 minutes extra here but it will save you a good hour when it comes to screwing the top down!
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Now we know where to put all our walls, let's get building.
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Be careful to make sure that the walls are at an exact 90 degree angle as this will impact upon the sound of the box. If they are not at 90 degrees it will have completely defeated the purpose of the lines you've transposed onto the top of the box.

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I decided to use fibreglass for more strength throughout the structure, this is however not of fundamental importance.

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When using higher excursion woofers (woofers that will move more air) I would suggest angle cutting (or flaring) the horn opening to get rid of any unwanted noise (ie chuffing) that may occur.

The design highly recommends using a double baffle.

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Sides and Back on

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Note to self: Put the wires onto the terminals before you put the sides and back on, as on one of the woofers the terminals are on the bottom, so I had to use a mirror and stuff around to get the wire into the terminals.

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Want some music while you're installing? Just rig up a battery charger, battery, amp, iPod and you're laughing. Haha, this was more to break in the woofers a bit........ actually I'm not really sure why I did it, it is by no means necessary.

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Now note the strips of 3mm closed cell foam cut up into strips that have been in the last couple of pictures.

These are to seal the top of the box.

The single design flaw of this box is that if you screw and glue the top then you are unable to access your woofers - they could die and you would have to rip your box up to replace them!

The closed cell foam acts as a gasket and also allows for small variations in height differences between the walls. If you have large variations, about 2-3mm, then I suggest using a thicker closed cell foam or even better sand them so that they are all as close as possible to one another.

Apply contact adhesive to the top of the walls and stick on the closed cell foam, I used a dynamat roller to get any air bubbles out.

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Screw the lid on and put it in your car. Damn I hope you measured up your car before you started building the box . I did a quick eye measure, which I don't recommend, but I figured that if it didn't fit I could still use it for home theatre or something.

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Wire it to your amp and away you go, enjoy I know that I have so far!

Complete listening evaluation to follow but for now just let me say the SQ and SPL are brilliant - for cheap, crap subs this box makes them sound absolutely incredible. So far in terms of SQ I would put it on par if not slightly better than my DD9115c and Alpine Type X. It gets very low, is extremely accurate as well as quick, true to the recording and loud!

Cheers,

Lindsay.

awesome....makes me wanna tackle one of these now....

what kind of power were they running off???

I have had reasonably good results from my Wicked1, running a couple of pioneer woofers.

very smooth, tight bass.
I should really reduce the rear volume to preserve the woofers - but it would raise the tuning too far above the car's resonance.

I get up to 139dB from 500W or 141dB from 800W.(approx) at 46Hz

shakes the house quite well on 150WRMS too.

blackices old jbl amp. BPx1.2200 i think is the model number, anyway i have ~2.5kw on tap, the power handling of the woofers however is pretty much the same as if they were in a sealed box, but because the horn design is so efficeint they Wang!

im tempted to play..

that design is for any 10" driver yes???

also, you should add the internal braces in the sealed section, they really help the rigidity of the mouth under high SPL loads

Well get off your bum! seriously trism i was skeptical but to put it bluntly it is more than worth the effort. I can only imagine how good two high quality 10's would sound, fortunately i'm hoping to have some Brahma's on the way very shortly



Something that I completley overlooked! Thanks for that simon. The fibreglass should help in this respect but the bracing you mention wasn't in the design that i acessed.

All that atempt this should use the bracing pulse-r has highlited.

Simon feel free to post up pics of your box build if you have them

Same for all that atempt this design your pictures are more than welcome.

Cheers

Lindsay

i think ill do it, but for HT use..

maybe with a couple DD 1010s, or something totally different......

excellent. my mate is looking at a system for when he gets his car. i have to convince him to build this. mmm, i want to build that monster!

a good woofer for this is the focal 25A1 - good entry level 10" and doesn't mind a big box.



I have bought a couple of Peerless XXLS woofers to put in once the pioneers die, they seem to be ok for low frequencies, and quite inexpensive. I modeled this using bass box and hornresp (google it). both say nice and smooth



I don't have build pics, as I bought the box semi-completed from a member here.
I put the braces in myself, and rounded the edges of the horn throat (skinny part where the slot is narrowest) to reduce turbulence. The bracing and the rounding gave me an extra .5 dB or so, and much nicer sound.

That thing looks pretty spesh, great tute 20Hurtz.

I wonder what makes this design so remarkeably efficient? I'm guessing the only drawbacks are the size, weight and ugly??

20Hurtz, you didn't happen to weigh the complete box (with subs in) did you?

Nice work I'd try one of these except I dont want to use my whole boot and i've got 12" subs

"- 2.4m * 1.2m of 18mm MDF ($63)"

Where did you buy that from? I just got a sheet of that for $29 from bunnings plus $1 for the cuts so i could fit it into my boot Maybe its cheaper in WA than elsewhere? I did get quoted $50 from a wood only supplier here though...

well the good thing about the closed cell is i can still add the bracing, but it will probably be impossible to flare the start of the horn. From the start this was going to be a quick job, doing it very properly would probably take ~15hours. When i get some higher quality woofers (still can't decide wether to go dd1008's or go the full hog and get 10" brahma's) i will build the box perfectly. It is noticable in the pics that i got bloody sick of angle cutting so just used a sh!t load of liquid nails haha. Ok for a quick job but i can see myself upgrading and building a proper box in the near future.



Horns are efficient.

They allow the sub to couple better with the air, this increases the efficiency.

Size yes, Weight yes but you could pimp it prett easily and make it look schmik, bit of carpet and paint in the horn mouth should make it look ok.

sorry mate didn't weigh it, i could carry i by myself but i needed the old boys help to get it into the car.



it can be done, people on the decware support forum have scaled it for up to 18" sub use.




yeh i htink my bunnings is just a rip off as that is where i got mine from. I would love to be abel to score mdf for $29!

Hmm I just happen to have a couple of Focal 27V2's sitting in 30L box's in my HT...

how would this design be if you did a tad bigger and put 2x 12's in it, would it work?

From what I read on the decware forums, for 2 12" subs you need the internal height at 15.5" vs. 13.5" for 8" and 10" subs. For other sized woofers you need scaling of the entire box...??

It would be fun to give this a go, the only thing holding me back would be the weight slowing the car down. With 2 decent subs that thing would weigh in at around 40+kg I'd think. Could always sell it though I guess.

Any chance you will be attempting a WO32 build, 20Hurtz, to see how it would compare to the Wicked One?

not a chance mate, bit to complex for me and i don't have the plans for it.

The SQ of the wicked one is good enough for me

I started to read the forums and whatnot, but from what I understand this box is a one size fits all proposition? That just makes no sense at all...

This was interesting:



But I think he means to model it in a 4th order enclosure and not a sealed enclosure as that doesn't make sense.

strictly, it's not a horn, but a flared/tapered port. Don't model it with bassbox, it's not quite right.

Hornresp is a program you can download for free, and does actual calcs on the measured throat sizes along the 'horn' length, and can also be used to add a port to the sealed section (for SPL use only as it will make a peak).

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anything else on building these 'horns'? i've never seen that decaware site, but just trolling thru the forums, there is talk of boxes gettin 17db more than a normal sealed box, with 6"s that sound like 15's.

I couldn't tell you as i do'nt havea termlab and have only tried it with a pair of tens, however it wouldn't supprise me.

I was amazed and the sq and output that was capable with these two crappy tens

I think 142dB in a commodore wagon off 800W is pretty good for old Pioneer 10's... TS-W1000C, rated 150Wrms each..

the response of the box is so smooth, you just find the peak of the car and off you go, the sub seems to play well from 25Hz right up to 75Hz.

The woofers you use should have a low Fs - around 25Hz or so. Then the 34 litre 'sealed' chamber is a little big, but still OK.


I saw some people have slot-ported the sealed chamber also for dB drags - but I'm not game to do that yet - theoretically it gives up to 6dB more again (but more like only +2dB).

yeah, so what do you do if you need a bigger chamber behind the sub? do you make the box taller? or do you move the baffle forward more? where do you make the changes?

you do NOT move the Baffle!

If you ned the sealed section bigger then i would say the easiest way would be to make the height of the sealed section only bigger. Not sure about making the height of the whole box bigger...

You can always use dacron to i guess.

make the sealed section only taller? so it would be like a big rectangular box, with two little 'pedistals' stick up? hrmm nice place to mount some amps.....

if you move the baffle forward, then you will need to decrease the throat size, and that will introduce turbulence (or chuffing) and reduce the efficiency.

you should not need a bigger sealed section, choose a woofer with a lower Fs.

Great tute 20hz. As it says on the site, there's a serious SPL gain with this enclosure design compared to the original 4th order bandpass enclosure:



Would this enclosure be as good as it gets for great, big, dirty SPL?

well with a true spl tuned ported box the out put at a specific frequency can be massive, but of course as a result all the other frequencies suffer.

this design allows you to get more loud for daily listening (louder than you would ever need to play it) and still maintain excellent SQ.

they will get loud for soundoffs, on the forums you see figures of 150db with 2 12 being thrown around (from memory) not sure what metre this was on though.

as I said - 142dB off 2x 10's running 800W, in a commodore wagon.
soon we'll see what that gives at 2kW (in theory, 146). and then I'll put the good woofers in - should get another 1 or 2dB from that.

should be able to get 150+ with 10's off a few kW.
if the windscreen doesn't break first.
I need a smaller car for dB stuff...

Interesting! I don't like the idea of a tuned ported box just for the fact that i'll be listening to music daily.

Anyone wanna build me one of these?

yep i just did. I built my wicked one for everyone so that they could give it a go.

Just takes a fair bit of patience, maybe a bit of help from the oldies, i had to get the old boy to help me a couple of times, sometimes you just don't have enough hands lol.

first lab results are in.

139.2 from two 10" sony pentagons in a sedan (n16 pulsar)

My mate is buying two DD1010's and we are building another wicked one for him, this time i will use the approriate bracing and maybe even port the sealed section.

in his s coupe sedan i am hoping for 145+

20 hurtz, how much power were u feeeding the woofers when you made the 139, im assuming it wasnt the 2.5kw mentioned in an earlier post?

have u tried flipping the box around to that the horn/big opening/whatever u call it faces into the cabin? how did it sound?

a sine wave at 139.2 there isn't much to hear lol hmm my ears are still aching a little

I have absolutley no idea how much power i was puting through them mate (but i was using the JBL amp), at a rough guess i would say they were running about 300 true watts a piece, I don't think they could have handled much more power as they seemed to be losing control.

no i didn't try flipping it around was a bit pressed for time and do'nt htink that i would ahve gained.

from what i have read my set up would have qualified for street A.

forgot to mention the 139.2 was at 45Hz which from the quick testing i did before the burp seemed to be the peak frequency.

i was more thinking about SQ when flipping it around, i know most people face it rearwards for bass loading or whatever, but some sound better facin forwards...

back fill the rear seats with custom foam blocks?, a bolt on internal roof to lower it 20 mm from the frontseats back ?,.
I am enjoing this thread as i am thinking of ways to build a box for a single 12.....................cors

139.2 - exactly what mine did on its first run (in the commodore again), but at 46Hz. I know they like about 15 inches of space after the opening to 'load' into.
Haven't tried firing forward yet....
bit hard in StA, as the seat needs to be folded down

mine was the 24" version (shortest recomended) and pushing it all the way bakc so its back up agianst the back seats i get about 8cm between the mouth and the bootlid. that would qualify for street a yeh? nothing is above the window line and no sub or sub amps that are not in the boot?

most definitely StA.

Here's the wicked one I constructed last year. It was built on the largest dimensions and held two Kicker Comp VR 10" woofers. I designed it to be used as a coffee table in my house but I still haven't got around to finishing it! The bottom needs more filler + sanding and a finish off with a coat of gloss black.






I have a helluva lot more indepth photos as I built this over like a 3 month period so if anyone has any requests for something that wasn't covered in this great tutorial, don't hesitate to ask!

have u fired it up??

hwo does it sound

Off 80w total it was kinda loud. However I felt the horn didn't disperse much sound, being loud in only certain parts of the room.

yes, the horn definitely works best loaded off a wall, or something.

Considered a quarter wave transmission line enclosure? They can be quite large. But supposedly very efficient, and have a bit of SQ about them.

yeah i am assuming you would need 2 subs for a box like this

although i have 2 alpine type s that i could build a box like this for i think it would take up way too much room.....but would still be interesting.....if i could pick up 2 10's i would certainly give it ago for my own car

only if it would fit.....seems like its really worth the effort

I heard the TL enclosure was less efficient than BR

By BR i assume you mean bass reflex? If so, ill soon be finding out As i am building a TL for my home stereo setup shortly.

cool