Pre-fabricated: Enclosures such as the universal Q-Custom from Q-logic is a great way to add some tight punch in a tight spot. Behind the seat, tucked away in the trunk, these enclosures come as small as 8”, so you can likely find one to fit your car.

Loaded compacts: There are quite a few of these on the market now, one in particular is the Rockford Fosgate Overload. The Overload is a 12” powered subwoofer mounted in a fully-enclosed (read protected) housing that is plug-and-play, featuring a remote bass control. This is an easy sub add-on for a factory head unit too.

Transducers- This is a really cool product that has been around for decades, but has recently made a big jump into modern car audio. A transducer is a motor that gets a signal from a low-powered amplifier and produces vibrations, emulating a subwoofer. You won’t win any SPL contests, but a transducer greatly increases the wow factor for any system and you don’t lose hearing . Couple a transducer with a small 8” sub and you have an incredible system that will knock your socks off and you won’t get any noise tickets.

Custom- The other solution is to go custom. Building something custom for your car is always an option, and when done well, will look great too. There are two camps for custom work- factory integration or in-your-face style. Factory integration requires just as much skill, if not more, than building a wild enclosure, because you have to work within the confines of the factory panels and design, incorporating the factory look into the new design. When done well, most people will think it was a factory option.

Everything else is designed to stand out. Take this 2007 Z06 Corvette system with gear from Rockford Fosgate for example. The owner of the car wanted a compact system that was loud, looked great and had audiophile sound. Built with laminated aluminum, PVC tubes and some serious airbrush skills, the system looks as good as it sounds.

Either way you go, you need to do some research and know what you want before you buy anything. Asking your local dealer what they would do with your car and your budget is always a great place to start.

Wood- Wood is great for the basic flat enclosure. It is cheap, dense, rigid and easy to work with, which is why it is the single most common type of material used for subwoofer enclosures. The problem with wood is that it is hard to bend. It can be bent and molded to a point, but mimicking the shapes of a car is way beyond what regular wood is capable of.

Fiberglass- This stuff is awesome. It can be formed to any shape, it’s strong as hell, super lightweight and costs a fortune. Oh wait, that is not a good thing. The price of fiberglass resin is expensive, and it keeps going up. Five years ago, the price for a gallon of resin was around $30, now it closer to $60. Considering that you can easily use 2 or 3 gallons in even a small two-10” sub enclosure or a gallon of resin for a pair of kickpanels means that the project becomes very expensive. While fiberglass is very strong and resists flexing (to the point that it just breaks), building tooling molds for fiberglass is more expensive than the materials to make the part. The molds must be two or more parts and it takes around a day to make a single set of parts from one mold, depending on the size of the part. This makes it cost prohibitive for use in our type of manufacturing. Sure, building a show car with fiberglass molds is not a big deal, you are only going pull a few parts from each mold and you have bigger budget, but for mass-production, it simply is not worth it.

There are several different types of plastics that are used for manufacturing. I am going to touch on the three most common types.

Roto-molded plastic- Roto-molding uses a metal tool (typically aluminum) that is cut to resemble the exterior shape. This allows you to reproduce a part the same every time with the exact dimensions and detail. Roto-molding uses plastic beads or pellets that are slowly heated up until they flow like liquid. During this process, the tooling spins around, spreading the liquid plastic over the interior surface of the tooling. This is commonly used for hollow parts. The tooling is expensive and so is the machinery to make the parts, so much so that these parts are typically Chinese made. These parts take hours to complete, thus further increasing the cost.

Injection-molded plastic- Another liquid-plastic method is injection molding. Similar to roto-molding, injection molding features specialized tooling that forms both the inside and outside of the plastic. This allows you to create things like mounting studs, stiffening ribs and other details on either side of the plastic. Just about every plastic housing you have ever seen is injection molded, radios, TV cases, telephones, these are almost all exclusively injection-molded. The tooling is expensive, so these parts must be mass produced on a large scale in order to overcome the price.

Vacuum-formed plastic- While there are several ways to use vacuum-forming (vac-forming for short), the most common is a single-sided tool that is pressed into a hot sheet of plastic. Once the plastic is pressed into the sheet, the air is sucked out of in between the tool and the plastic. This pulls the plastic into the details of the tooling and forms the part. This is the most economical method of plastic forming, as it is quick, relatively easy and the tooling does not cost near as much. This means that you can build more parts and sell them for less. This is why a pair of Q-Forms only cost a couple hundred bucks and not $600.

Custom-built kickpanels at a specialty shop will cost easily $1500, a custom fiberglass enclosure can break the bank with ease, but a Q-Custom and a set of Q-Forms might set you back $500, definitely a bargain and you will know what they look like before you buy! I have seen some truly fugly “professional” built kickpanels and enclosures.

Not only does this make the panels harder to deform and install incorrectly, but it also lowers the resonant frequency. With more mass and inherent rigidity, the panels feel better in your hand and fit better in the car. This plastic has been retrofitted to work with all of the previous tooling and all new designs are being done to accommodate the thicker plastic.

Being innovative does not mean using something completely new, sometimes it just means better.

What makes a Car Audio system sound good? Questions answered by renowned audio engineer, Joe Gross of Q Logic

Q-Logic eventually grew to be so big that the big boys, namely Rockford Fosgate, noticed. During a time span where Rockford was gobbling up brands like MB Quart and Lightning Audio, they bought the Q-Logic facilities in Stillwater, OK. During that time, the Stillwater plant was used to build Rockford Fosgate enclosures as well as Q-Logic brand products. Big business politics and short sightedness lead to a decrease in Q-Logic market penetration, since the Rockford sales reps were now Q-Logic reps too. Selling empty wood boxes and plastic kickpanels is different than selling ten-thousand dollars worth of amps, subs and speakers. Q-logic became an “alsoand”, and did not get the attention it deserved.

As the product designer for Q-Forms and Q-Customs during the Rockford years, I have personal experience with watching a beloved product fall by the wayside.

After just a few years, Rockford’s “buy now, worry about the consequences later” philosophy caught up to them when the car audio market took a serious nosedive. As a result, Rockford shed most of the companies that it had purchased just a few years earlier. Q-Logic was the last to be sold off. Darker times would lie ahead.

A group formed from the local Stillwater plant management purchased Q-Logic. The members of this group had been with Q-Logic for many years, one had been with the company since the very beginning. With the best intentions, the new ownership struggled to maintain market share and product placement after years of neglect from the Rockford marketing machine. Coupled with the dwindling and rapidly changing car audio market, Q-logic was in serious trouble.

Which brings us to today. Founders Dave Cunningham and Bill Basore have stepped back into the fray and once again own the Q-Logic brand and facilities. With the determination and passion for Q-Logic that helped build the company in the first place, Q-Logic will rise again. The original line of Q-Forms and Q-Customs, with a few upgrades like thicker plastic for lower resonance and better fitment, remain in place. The ever-popular Q-Logic universal enclosure production is in full swing. The best enclosures on the market are still here, and they will continue to provide you with the best quality possible in a universal enclosure.

With this new beginning, Q-Logic has branched out into an avenue that has previously been left unexplored for the brand. Direct sales to general public are an important aspect of today’s business model, and to that end, Q-Logic has developed a direct sales website, http://www.qlogicdirect.com, so you can purchase the best enclosures on the market directly from the source. Need some speakers and subs to go in that new enclosure and those kickpanels? One-stop shopping for Rockford Fosgate audio equipment is available as well (see, we still have love for ROFO!).

As a fan of the products, I am happy once again to be a part of this company. Like the Phoenix that rises from its ashes, and the city of New Orleans that continues to rebuild after total devastation, Q-Logic is back with a vengeance. We will reign supreme again.

Why Q Logic? Interview with Bill Basore from Q Logic on Vimeo.

Q Logic – How It’s Made Reel from Q Logic on Vimeo.