Let's wait to hear from Matt who installed it and see what he says.

I will agree that it did blow however there was no clipping of the signal after tuning, they just were overpowered because I wired them at 1 ohm instead of 4 ohms like I had thought I wired it. Installer error :icon23:

If that's true, then I have one working sub that could theoretically blow any time now, one blown sub that I'm SOL on, and approx a few hundred dollars gone.

Fantastic.

If you keep reading past the semi-colon you will see that I stated as much.

Now that is just pedantry. Too little power for the selected level is exactly what causes an amplifier to clip, which blows speakers.

To say that a speaker was overpowered by an amplifier implies that amplifiers "push" power to speakers... which they don't: speakers draw power from amplifiers. How much they draw is determined by the level selected and the speaker's impedance and efficiency. Again, (and strangely enough, BigNate and I seem to agree on this) the only way to blow a speaker with too much power is to play it at levels which exceed its physical or thermal limits... which doesn't seem to be the case here. It's simple: speakers don't draw any more power than they need to play at the level you've selected.

:tiphat:

Is there a way to tell if the speaker is blown, other than it is unresponsive?

NOTE: As it is the installers fault "mine" I have offered Jim payment for the replacement and to install it at no charge.

You could measure impedance, and/or gently push the cone by hand and listen for sounds of broken-ness. The best test is to hook it up to a known-good source.

I tried hooking it up to the wires that are going to the working sub, but no response. However, I did push on the cone by hand and it depresses with no noise coming from it.

Did you call sonic yet to see what they will offer you for warranty?
See what they say... if not send me the serial number of the subwoofer.

Sounds good man. I will call them tonight.
Where is the serial number for the sub? - is it located on the sub itself?

The gain has nothing to do with how much power the woofer sees. The gain is not a bass boost knob, or a volume knob, either.

The volume level was low when the sub stopped working. That's why I'm so much in disbelief.
The bass eq on my radio was all the way down and the volume was on 10 or 11. By comparison, when my volume was on let's say, 6, I could barely hear the subs.

Idk, based on the volume I was playing it, it just seems tough to believe that the subs were being overpowered.

Wait a minute......too little power damages speakers???:icon14:

Speakers fail in two ways:

You turn the volume to a particular level, which determines the load that the speaker places on the amp, let's say X watts.

Now then: your amp either can, or can not, supply X watts:

a) your amp can supply X watts: the speaker plays at the selected volume. If playing at this volume causes the speaker to exceed its thermal or physical capacities (i.e., the amount of heat it can dissipate, or the distance the cone can extend), then the output sound is distorted and the speaker ultimately fails.

b) your amp can not supply X watts: the amplifier attempts to supply the amount of power that the speaker is drawing, but can not. This causes clipping, as the electrical waveform from amp to speaker has its peaks and troughs squared off. The output sound is compressed and the speaker ultimately fails.

The key bit that many people don't get is that the speaker is the component that determines how much output power (i.e., wattage) is drawn from the amp.