Hello! I’ve been thinking has anyone put a LS460 10in subwoofer in the deck of the LS430? I’ve been searching and finding zero results on this. As a 10in ML sub is a substantial bit cheaper than the LS430 8in ML sub. I know it’s possible but anyone know how much “modifying” one would have to do?

 

It will require hacking the parcel shelf up something awful, and the LS460 sub is likely not the correct impedance for the LS430 amp, which will cause the amp to burn up.

Your best bet to save some money is to put on of these in and wire the 8-ohm dual voice coils up to give you the proper 16 ohms that the stock LS430 sub has.

I've been running one for years now with no problems.

Dayton Audio SD215A-88 8" DVC Subwoofer https://a.co/d/cpOynAq

 

How do you wire it up for 16 ohms?

 

Have to wire in series as parallel would half.

 

Thanks, but I still don't understand what that means. Sorry ot be a pain the ***, but I've never had to do this to a speaker before.

 

Hey, that's why we are all here, right?

The easiest way to explain it would be with the following diagram:



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It can re-use most of the original subwoofer mounting ring, and if you slice the connector off of the old sub, you can set it up to just plug into the factory wiring without any other mods.

My original sub was toast and after wasting money having a shop rebuild the foam, (which lasted 4 minutes before the speaker completely died) I just put one of those Dayton ones in and haven't looked back

To get the old one out, you can either remove the back seats, and parcel shelf cover (along with wailing, cursing, and gnashing of teeth) or if you pop the grill off the subwoofer and make a few slices in the parcel shelf around the sub, you can make it easy to access without having to dismantle the interior. When you snap the grill back on, it will cover up any ratty edges you may have created and will look stock.

 

I handle these types of upgrades by buying a spare sub and hacking it
https://www.ebay.com/itm/325241028300

Depending on car/system I troll Crutchfield and Aliexpress to find the best match. Aliexpress especially has a very wide selection you can match up just about any speaker. I put these in an old Toyota it is a great match for the original paper cone speakers.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33011340067.html

Has very high sensitivity like the originals, every speaker you find on Crutchfield is not suitable.

 

How does the Dayton compare to the original? Do you listen to bass-heavy music (i.e. hip hop or EDM)? I refoamed the Mark Levinson sub and it has very little bass output and buzzes loudly on tracks with very low frequency bass. It's possible that the voice coil was slightly off-center when I glued the new surround back on, or perhaps the sub has inherently low excursion. Either way, I'm now looking into buying new sub but I'm skeptical that any single 8" subwoofer will have sufficient output at very low frequencies.

 

The Dayton audio isn’t bad. I put it in my last car and for $50 it was good but it left me wanting more. I do think the ML sub is better but I don’t know about it being $300/$400 better. For the price of a new oem sub you can buy an Amp and power a bigger better sub.

 

I fixed a guitar amp with that exact Dayton sub it sounds very nice I know not a perfect comparison but it's a good unit. Can't say for sure but I think the power rating is too high and sensitivity too low to be a suitable ML sub replacement. Refoam job doesn't guarantee you will get the same performance the foam material might be too stiff or too soft vs. original.

Apologies @FelixBabakuntos if you posted, what year is your car?

 

It's a 2005 UL. Yeah, I figure that the new surround is too stiff and/or I didn't center it correctly. I purchased a Polk MM842 for the time being but I have a feeling I'll be building a custom system soon.

 

If you use a separate amplifier for a bigger sub, how is this wired? Is the input to the separate subwoofer amplifier coming from the head unit, or from the ML amplifier?

I'm unclear if the output of the head unit is two channel, or if it is already splitting the signal into a channels for each speaker.

I looked at pictures of the (2004-2006) ML amplifier, and I see three female Molex connectors but I'm unsure what each plug is connected to. Does anyone have wiring diagrams?

 

The Lexus subwoofer is more a woofer/midbass driver than a dedicated woofer, similar to this one. In fact this matches my ML sub quite closely except it is 8 ohms.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004077591051.html

I think my ML sub is 5 ohms? I have to check again.
Not sure how the head unit talks to the amplifier hopefully someone here knows. It would be nice to tap into the line outputs from the head unit, if they exist.

 

It's nominally 16 ohms, but IIRC measures roughly 12 ohms with a multimeter.

 

Well that's a problem not many 16 ohm speakers out there not ones designed for automotive use.