Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio dual voice coil sub ?

if you blo one set of coils in a dvc sub is it ok to use just the other set or will this harm the speaker? what will that mean for the sub? if you just use one set will it not sound as good? or will it not take as much power

Never done it but I would think the other one would work as long as you didn't damage anything on that voice coil.

You need both voice coils for the amp to do it's job. If one voice coil goes out then the amp will no longer perform like it was. It will need that second voice coil to drop the ohms back down to where they used to be before the VC went out. Get the woofer fixed or replaced.

Might also wreck your amp being unstable - replace or fix if possible - how did this happen?

Who makes the sub? Look at the sub. Somewhere on the magnet you should see a ohm load. Most subs are still gonna be 8 or 4 ohm. Now the issue of load occurs when you take the two vc's and bridge them to an amp. For example, if you take two single voice coil subs and you bridge them to an amp, what you have done is doubled the load at the amp and you have divided the ohm load by half.

2x4ohm subs bridged=2ohm load

Same thing on a dvc sub. Two vc's at 4ohms bridged is a 2ohm load at the amp.

Cool? Now you could probably run a dvc with one vc working at a 4ohm load and it would sound.....decent....BUT if you have two dvc subs you don't want to do this unless you plan on doing the same to the other sub. Besides that, when you have subs that are dvc, the coils are so close that if you blow one, you probably damaged the second so either way, you probably would want to replace it anyway.

Make sense?
Hollar if you have anymo' questions
Rich

My sub has 2 3" 2ohm voice coils.My amp has to see a 4ohm loed minimum to work properly bridged.

To use a DVC properly both coils should be wired (either in series, parallel one amp to each coil). Otherwise you are not getting the subs full potential. Using one coil can cause premature failure as well (no comments Dave )

It is possible to have one coil of a dvc to go bad under normal use, once this occurs the woofer must be replaced.

The idea behind a dvc is flexiblity, it does not mean you can blow out one coil at a time till all of them are cooked

Can you wire one voice coil to the other in the same sub, and then run a single wire back to the amp? Or do you have to run each coil on it's own channel?

You can connect the coils together on the sub or you can run it to the amp, there are several ways to wire it properly.

Knu was almost correct except that one of the major advantages of a DVC is to use it in a free air application with only one VC and a variable resistor across the other coil to allow you to "dial-in" your Qts.

And using 1 VC will not harm the speaker in any way.

I was going to ignore the topic...but you just had to comment, didn't you!? :p