A few months ago I started working on a sub for a friend at work. We got to talking one day and we discovered we both share an interest in audio and music and such and he said he was looking to get a new sub for his home theater, so I volunteered to help him out. I don’t like to pass up on an opportunity to build a sub of this caliber, especially when it’s been a few years since I’ve designed and built something this massive. Well 6 months later the project is almost complete, all with the exception of doing the actual staining and finishing of the box. It’s ready enough to listen to, so last night I popped in Toy Story II and watched the first 5 minutes. This is my favorite test movie to try out new subs with. I’ve tested a lot of subs to the intro of that movie, so it’s a good reference for me as to what it’s suppose to sound like or what it can sound like. Not to mention this one time several years ago I was in some really high-end audio/video store and they played that movie for us to audition the new Wilson Audio subwoofer that they were raving about. It’s got a pair of 12″ subs in a box about half size of a refrigerator and aside from looking awesome, it didn’t sound all too bad either. However I made a permanent mental reference of what a $21,000 commercial sub sounds like playing the first scene in that movie, and I’ve used it to this day to compare any sub I’ve built since. And the TC-3000 definitely stacks up. It rumbled and shook my entire house with pulsating, deep bass. I’m actually quite sad I have to give it up. Though it’s a bit on the big side for my living room, sitting at exactly a 21-1/4 inch cube. It yields a box that is about 100L net volume for that massive 15″ driver. And it think it’s quite happy there too. The entire sub weighs in at 146 pounds. I had to slide it from the living room to the family room to test it out, it was too heavy to lift by myself.
