Rockville SS8P powered 100w car subwoofer. The name was too corny an Asian knockoff name to pass up and it had good reviews. I don't really discount quality from China anymore, since it is essentially unavoidable. Even with domestic brands I had been so loyal to for over a lifetime by now. I feel better about it with so much help from computers in just about every aspect of manufacturing these days, while others charge for a step up in component quality perhaps, that ends up translating what it would cost for a highly skilled artisan to make each piece by hand instead, for essentially the same things it seems.
Anyway, for $85, I figured WTH. I just needed a lower end to fill out my new 6.5" door and rear speakers, the new amp driving them and the sound deadening treatment to the flimsy door skins, inside and out. I know we can't tell audio quality directly from a recording over the internet, but you can often tell if there is potential there, and their demo was pretty convincing, and it ended up pretty much sounding as good in person!
The housing is aluminum and the unit has some heft to it. I have it mounted under the passenger seat, and it can be moved elsewhere. Now I have the Alpine amp crossed over at 80hz to the sub and this system now sounds excellent.
When I dug into this on Sunday, I changed the system over to the pre-outs and powered off the Alpine head unit's internal amp. I thought all I would have to do is connect into the leads in the dash to the amp. What I found was a wiring nightmare of the lamp cord variety. The front and rear speakers were daisy chained on the front channels. I basically had to rewire the entire system. Not only that, after I got the seats all out, I realized I had forgotten splice hardware, so I ended up having to solder and heat shrink everything.
I did manage to install a distribution block under the dash. I only wanted one hookup to the battery. The dist block is under the dash and the sub and Alpine amp are connected there.
Ended up taking both seats out ('99'Toyota Tacoma) and was able to run the bulk of the harnesses on either side of the trans tunnel. Time will tell if the low cost of this sub will reveal itself in exchange for longevity of any sort but, for now, it sounds pretty darned good. An 8" sub is still potent in a xtracab pickup. The bass is accurate for music. While it would not win any SPL contests compared to the overkill that is in autos now, it really does music well.
Adding the 50wpc Alpine amp to the new infinity speakers was a night/day difference compared to the head unit. Granted, had all four channels been utilized initially, the head unit would have held it's own for normal listening. I ended up rewiring the head unit and all four speakers, wiring in the new amps in 10 hrs total. Plus I cleaned the carpet while the seats were out.
