# Old school MTX blue thunder sub review



## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

Hey all,

I know I've made a few posts asking about the old school MTX BT's and did not get much response, but I just had to have a pair. I have a collection of subs that are known for being great SQ subs (Oz Audio 250L and RF Audiophiles), powerful subs (JBL 1000GTI and Lanzar Pro Plus), and some others, but I really wanted some of the older subs that were just known to be efficient and stupid loud. I gave up looking for Kicker gold letter comps, but steered towards the BT's since these were subs I've never owned. In fact, I only heard them once when I was 15. The guy was playing Limelight and I felt like I was getting hit by a baseball bat. 

Fast forward to now. I purchased a pair of clean 10" 8 ohm BT's (BTW1048). They are not the ones with the script writing on the dust cap, but the next gen from the early 90's. From what I've seen / read, the only thing different is the writing as the cones, surrounds, and motors are all the same.










So when I got them one had taken a hit to the magnet and tweaked the basket. I got a refund for it. Luckily I was able to mount it to my bench and use blocks and a bar to straighten it back out. It is not perfect, but is now functional. Long term I'll see if I can find one that is trash and swap the parts from this one to the basket on that one.

Onto the testing!!! Basically I threw one in whatever boxes I had laying around for now.

Sealed:
My first test was to put one into a 1.25 cu ft box I had and block the port to make it sealed. Honestly, I was expecting to be disappointed in these, but was actually impressed with how accurate and musical this sub turned out to be. It rivaled my RF Audiophiles! The only issue was that SPL was a bit weak, but again it was a single 8 ohm. The SPL spec for sealed is .75 cu ft, but all I had that was smaller was .58. I figured what the hell and threw it in. Again, pretty surprised that it did not sound like crap. It definitely was higher up in the frequency range, but not choked at all. It really makes me think these could live in the .85 cu ft chambers in the trunk of my GN just fine. From the limited info I have, I think 1.0-1.1 would be the sweet spot.
FYI they state .75 cu ft for SPL and 1.5 cu ft as the reference enclosure.

Vented:
This is what to do with these if you want them stupid loud. I started with a 1.87 cu ft box ported at 36hz. OMG was it LOUD!! That being said, it was pretty sloppy lol. The only other ported box I had was 2.0 cu ft ported at 26hz. The lower tuning frequency really cleaned it up. I could see how if the right size ported enclosure these would work well in a home theater application. SPL enclosure is 1.5 cu ft ported at 43hz and the reference enclosure is 2.75 cu ft ported at 29hz.

My next experiment will be to iso load them in a 1.25 cu ft ported enclosure and then also mount them sealed in my GN to see how they compare to the RF Audiophiles. 

All in all I have zero regrets about collecting these and honestly can't wait to find the sweet spot for sealed to enjoy some hard hitting rock bass from them. In the larger sealed box they were musical and really handled all types of music naturally. This is more than I can say about most other subs.

I think the only other old school subs I still want to collect are JL Audio 1st gen W1 series. They are really good all around subs that I used a lot back in the day. The W0's that came after could not touch them on SQ.

Hope some of you found this useful!


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## 63flip (Oct 16, 2013)

I'm a big fan of PYLE from the Huntington,IN era. Many of the old subs they built fell into the category as the Blue Thunders. Low power, efficient, and stupid loud. To top it off they were relatively inexpensive for what you got. I was just playing around with some gear I had and installed an old school PYLE dual 10" 2 way truck enclosure in my Ranger powered by a PPI 2075 AM and was blown away. The enclosure was ported with tubes. The output was amazing. I listen to all types of music and were they really performed was with heavy metal. I threw in some old Pantera and the drums just kicked. They managed to stay accurate and the beats were very tight, not muddy. They did lack on the low end for hip-hop but really made up for it in pretty much everything else I listened too. I ended leaving them in my truck for a couple months. 

I also just sold a pair of 10" BT Legends in an MTX Thunderbox. It was a a band pass configuration with 3 chambers, a port at one end and the subs facing each other inside. The other end was plexi. I had them hooked up to a JL Slash 250/1 to demo them to the buyer. They got really loud but I was disappointed by the port noise. In all fairness the port was loose. Sealing it with some silicone around the back might have cleared it up.


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## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

These are totally meant for sealed based on what I have played with so far. I put them in the GN and initially they were sloppy, but everything has been in the trunk of that car. I ended up sealing the box to the rear deck better, adding my coustic XM-5e since my headunit did not have any adjustments for frequency on the sub output, and dialed them in. I ended up setting phase to 180 off, cutoff frequency of 90ish, and 2db boost at 55hz or so. They are clean and hit hard. I really like them.


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## Sine Swept (Sep 3, 2010)

I put 2 12's in a big sealed box into the trunk of a Mark VII LSC. I flush mounted them into the baffle of the box, turned out pretty nice. Plenty of sound running them off an old PG Outlaw


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## blasito1973 (Jun 16, 2018)

i remember i had an OEM Blue thunder bandpass box with 2 10 SVC and it sounded really good , not to loud but i remember great SQ


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## DuggrHarryRussell (Sep 29, 2019)

blasito1973 said:


> i remember i had an OEM Blue thunder bandpass box with 2 10 SVC and it sounded really good , not to loud but i remember great SQ


what about these changes?


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