This Kicker can kick some serious SPL...

At First Glance:

The Kicker Comp 12 is the entry-level in the Kicker's line of subwoofers, but that doesn't mean they skimp on this woofer. The cone, coupled with the Inverted Dustcap, forms a very solid piece that can withstand high pressure in a small sealed enclosure. The polyester foam surround are stitched to the cone to eliminate the possibility of separation, the rubber speaker gasket serves as a seal and protects the stamped steel frame. The sub has a 40-ounce booted magnet with a vented and extended pole piece, and also vents around the single voice coil to draw cold air to cool off the voice coil, Kicker calls this "Perimeter Venting." Connections are via standard solder-type with large guage wires going to the voice coil, with care done so the wires won't bounce off the cone and make noise during high excursion.

Listening *Note all the listening is done in a house*

I bought this speaker from a friend of mine for 40 bucks, but he paid 70 when brand new. I have to note that I have the 8-ohm version of the sub instead of 4-ohm, which was suitable for home use. Now this friend of mine is deep into bass and he has serious bass power in his Explorer, consisting two batteries and a 1-farad cap just for one USAmps 2000x that runs two 15 inch Eclipse Titanium cone "Professional Subwoofer." On a quiet night I could hear his bass from more than a quarter mile away. So, basically he bought this speaker just for kicks, he made a very small(and completely wrong) vented box for the sub and ran the 1Hz to 100Hz test tone with his beat-up home receiver, with about 150 watts of distorted power going into this poor thing. The vented subwoofer obviously went into overload at such low frequency, it maxed out its peak-to-peak excursion limit which was about an inch and a half or so, we could very well smell the heating of the voice coil, but that was about it, it didn't even bottom out. This subwoofer took the serious abuse and recovered without a hitch, but as for his beat up receiver it went into gross overload and shut itself down. At that time I was in a need for a temporary sub in my room, so I bought the speaker and made a slot-vented enclosure that would produce higher SPL at 35Hz and above. I listen to music a lot more than I watch movies, so trading the missing subsonics for higher SPL wasn't a big deal. I ran a 150 watt sub amp to this baby and was greeted with strong kick drums and midbass, and it sounded really fast and accurate consider the box I made was purely for SPL. I put in some dance music with strong 60Hz bass kick, and my amp ran out of steam before the speaker moved more than half an inch peak-to-peak. Convinced for its SPL mojo, I put in The Matrix DVD and the gun shots was quite strong, but shotgun shots sounded like a pistol, and the ultra-low explosion information was missing. Please note that I made a box that DOES NOT produce subsonics, I plugged the slot port with a bunch of clothes and the sub did indeed went a lot lower, about as low as 25 Hz. Watching movies was a lot more exciting this way, but the midbass would suffer and playing music had less impact.

Conclusion:

This sub was built and sounded more than its price would suggest. It took abuse and recovered fine, it could be made for SPL, sound quality, or sub-bass, depending on the design of the box. Overall I really liked this subwoofer, even though it was only a temporary substitute before I upgrade to a even better subwoofer. If you are looking for a bargain subwoofer with performance, this is for you.


Fast Update:

I finally got my Proton D1200 home amplifier fixed and in working order, so I figure why not put the Kicker to the test? The amp is capable of 1600 watts of clean dynamic power into 8 ohms bridged, and I ran about 1200 watts into the Kicker in the same box. With normal bass-happy rap music (I used Nappy Root's new album, track 10)I was able to move the speaker to its maximum possible excursion with enough air moving out of the slot port to move a brick, the SPL was much higher than a pair of JL Audio 12W1's. However, after about 30 seconds of play I did notice the distinct smell of a burning voice coil, so I turn it down. One would think that an entry subwoofer cannot possibly be designed to handle 1200 watts, but this one did for quite a while, thus proved the quality and reliability of Kicker's products.

More Update:

I took this subwoofer out and put it into a correctly designed ported box, the bass got quite a bit deeper and "cleaner", but it couldn't take more than about 200 watts max at frequencies between 40 to 15 Hz. With typical bass-happy rap material (like Nelly), the subwoofer will overload at volume levels under my taste. I did ran it all the way up to 800 watts on track one on the Boom Raider CD, about three minutes into the song a really deep and loud sine bass will kick in and literally the poor Kicker almost got its butt kicked, my room was filled with voice coil burning smell and I turned it down. This is the first time in my life that I have to turn down a subwoofer because it smelled so bad, it gave me a headache. The speaker still works like a charm though.