My Bazooka Tube Install

SaltLifeCC

Finally decided to add a sub to my cart. My radio got really wet on the haul down to the campground and I ended up taking it out to let it dry out good. When I put it back in, I went ahead and added and ran the wiring for the sub-out low level outputs and the remote turn on wire. I ordered a Bazooka BTA850FH powered sub online. My daughter wants a sub in her car, so I knew if it wouldn't fit on the cart, I could install it in her car.

After measuring, I decided the sub should fit between the front and rear seatbacks. I really like this location because there is no way to steal the sub without someone taking the time to remove a seatback to get to it. Turned out to fit almost perfectly and is secured down to part of the rear seat frame using the straps supplied with the sub. This is an 8" sub with only a 50w amp but it sounds awesome. Can't imagine putting anything more powerful on the cart and hopefully the 50w amp doesn't draw as much juice off my battery as something bigger. I wish I had a sub like this in my vehicle. It was hard to take decent pix after the install because the sub is hidden pretty well but here are a few pix below.

Some notes if you might be interested in one of these subs. It doesn't have line level inputs. Instead it comes with a harness and the line level inputs to it have male connectors on it. I had to make a stop at radio shack and get an adapter with female connectors on both sides. The harness just plugs into the sub and then you can chop up the wires on the harness for your particular install. It supports using line level or speaker level inputs and has an auto-on feature if you don't have a remote power feed from your head unit. The harness also comes with quite a long length of wire so you could potentially run it all the way to the back of your head unit. I chopped off everything I didn't need and shortened the rest up since I already had wiring run to my sub location.

Some pix:

From the rear of the cart:


From above the seatbacks:


From the passenger side:

BGW

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jakesnake27

Looks good man!

rinman

Looks good Salt!

How does it sound? I love mine!

Put mine underneath above the rear end....much like you I didn't want it taken. The only way to get it out is drop the rear end.

SaltLifeCC

It sounds great. With it behind the seatback, it's like having a massager with the right song LOL. This is my second sub install and I'm realizing that there is more to sound systems than watts and speaker diameter. Once you have a sufficient amount of both, it's about tuning. So, with decent speakers and not a ridiculous amount of watts everywhere, you can take a good head unit with good tuning features and filters, and make it sound awesome, even at volumes higher than I care to listen to music for a long period of time. My son has a friend at the campground that tinkers with his sound system all the time. He has an amp on his pushing hundreds of watts and he has a homemade sub in a box encloser that covers his hole bagwell and it sounds no better or louder than my setup does. Yet he is constantly blowing speakers and burning out amps.

rinman

I like the music loud for short periods.....not like the kids....all the time! Wish I was better at fine tuning, but I usually leave that up to the boys. My head unit is 35 whats per channel and it is enough....my sub is 250 watt.....kind of overkill, but I let the boys help me pick it out......that's what I get for listening to them.

Funny about your son's friend and blowing speakers/amps.

SaltLifeCC

Yeh I had to learn a little bit about the tuning because my son goes behind me and adjusts the bass so that it is overly prominent, so much so that it doesn't even sound good to me. I like to hear all of the music, not just the booms. He likes to keep it such that even when you turn it down to the point you can barely hear the other nots, you still hear and feel the sub thumping. Not my thing.

I don't get caught up in the watts - it's just a number. If you can make it sound good even at the highest volume you want it, who cares how many watts there are. And if my 8" bass tube sounds better than a 12" box sub, I'd rather have the tube. As the saying goes, bigger is not always better. Perhaps it's just that I don't feel the need to compensate for other things. LMAO!

kgsc

I used to run a pair of 8 inch tubes years ago in competitions and could hang with the 12s and 15s at only 90 watts feeding each. Whole system was rated less than 150 watts but because of how I had it wired it put out close to 350 and could push a sound level meter past 130db. Still have one of those laying around, may have to check out a location for it :)