I work for a remodelling company over the summer and on my last job site the woman donated to me two home speaker boxes. they each are a three component system. the 12" subs in either box are blown. is it possible to just hook up the 12" subs that came in my first car that are just sitting around? or would that cause all sorts of problems.

 

You could put any 12" in there as long as the depth clears.

But I'm sure it won't have the proper cu.ft. for the subs you add. But yeah it will work fine.

 

thanks. im probably just gonna buy some cheap ones from wal mart cuz the ones in the speakes are ancient and absolutely destroyed

 

ah, no, you will need to be sure to match the impedence of the woofers. Pull the blown ones out and see if they have the ohms rating on the back of it. If your woofers are not the same then I would not recomend it as not only would it effect the x-over point in the speakers(if they have one) but also the output impedence your amp would see. Worst case scenario, you replace the woofers and hook them up and they blow your amp..........

 

never really heard of subs blowing an amp before... usually the other way around. but yeah theres a crossover and the subs are rated at 4ohms I think? could be 8, I'll have to check in the morning. and for the record the're not amped yet... theyre bein used as "headphones" being driven by my logitech computer/home system. I'm pretty sure that also uses a crossover and only sends low end bass to the woofer thats part of the logitech setup. so either way I'm not going to be pushing a lot out of the subs.

 

you must be new to the audio world? The impedence(ohms) rating of the woofer tells you how hard the amp will work to make the woofer move. IF you have a lower impedence rating the amp will work harder to drive it, and can make it work hard enough to blow the amp because it will consume too much power and overheat.

I have absolutely no idea how you are using a 12" woofer as "headphones" but again you are risking blowing some equipment. Any componant system such as the logitech you describe will first take the signal and split it electronically so that the bass goes to the woofers, the mids and highs go to the tweets. This is doen internally as the x-overs are normally monted inside the speakers. Now the cross over freq is also determined by the impedence of the woofer so again if you are running a woofer that doesn't match, you will also be changing the freqs that the woofer plays and now also risking the woofer being damaged.

 

Extremely new... I've never really done more than install a stereo and replace speakers...
I really want to learn more though haha, but for all intents and purposes, what would be the best thing for me to do with the components I have?