How 3 Inch Subwoofer Perform? Meet The Tang Band W3-1876S

My previous post about buying the Vifa drivers from online store here, you will notice that I also bought several items including the mini sub-woofer. It is Tang Band W3-1876S, a 3 inch sub-woofer for about $34. How it's perform compare to larger diameter sub? I will find it out!

First of all, this mini sub-woofer is very small. It is also light due to plastic basket with small neodymium magnet. The cone is made from rubberized plastic and the surround is made from thick rubber. I could not imagine what would the sound could be by looking the size of this sub.

The speaker box, which I built by myself is not really okay. I guess it is ugly. The total volume is about 5 liter.

The box is made for only a night and the result is not at it's best. I found that the port is too small for this kind of application. (I realized that I am now make a sub-woofer box, not a full-range box) The air port create noise and rattling during testing.

DIY is a friends of mistakes, another mistakes are found:) The box is too high. It could not fit under the frontvseat. So I put it on the back as the previous sub located.

See how small is the box compare to the Soundstream mono-block amplifier.

The mighty old-school sub-woofer from Rockford Fosgate! Will the newer, smaller, lighter sub compare to this one? I am not sure.

Initial setup for the small sub-woofer require more gain. When using the Rockford, could set the potentiometer gain on amplifier at 9 o'clock and I should crank it up until 2 o'clock for this 3 inch Tangband with the same sound pressure level. This cause due to smaller diameter of the Tangband cone compare to the large Rockford.

The camera cannot catch the cone moving while playing the bass. It is move like crazy! I should tell that the deep bass is awesome for this little sub! The low freq playing very nice compare to the Rockford. I set the freq cut-off at around 70 hz and it play deeper with this sub. The downside for this mini sub is the limit to crank the volume way up. It make the sub distorted easily.

Well, this mini sub cannot compare to the large one in term of sound level. Especially for this car application, the sub should push to it's limit to make the bass sound loud. But one thing I should consider about this sub is about the nice lower frequency response. It play low and nice. My next step is re-calculate the box again and hopefully the result will be better.

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