JBL GT5-12

Hi, everyone, welcome to this review. Let me start this off with just telling a little bit about myself and my audio background. Being an Electrical Engineer, efficient and well-thought out design is key to any and all products which I consume. I've gone through the all the stereo in a boxes and decided to step things up and design a home system from the ground up each component carefully hand picked on a budget of $500 for the whole system.
The system: This 12" rated subwoofer driver was chosen to go into my hand built 3/4" MDF ported 2.05 cubic foot enclosure (not including port or driver displacement). It is driven by an MB Quart Discus 4-channel A/B amplifier with channels 3 & 4 bridged, feeding 320 watts of rated power. The amp feeds off a 400 watt continuous rated DC power supply. Though I rarely take advantage of all the available power.
Performance: While I only have personal experience with a few budget subwoofer drivers, I am a musician with a keen ear for sound nuances (I'm also somewhat of a bass fiend). I own earbuds and headphones that produce very flat sub bass curves, easily down to 20 hz, these can outdo any 12" subwoofer driver in below 35 hz sub bass, So I know what to look for. After more than 100 hours of listening with every possible musical genre, I can say that this performs as well as expectations. My main focus in a sub driver was to have very accurate and LOW frequency reproduction. Now, anyone with experience in these matters knows that ratings don't necessarily line up with reality. (Notice there is no threshold mentioned [such as +/- 3 dB]... vague ratings are hard to get an accurate idea of actual performance. However other reviews around the internet, along with the a look at the manufacturer supplied frequency response graphs, seemed to also give me the impression that this driver stands above the rest in low frequencies. Now, it all depends on the acoustic environment obviously. A car is much friendlier to low frequency reproduction than a big room, hence the reason for choosing this driver. Using my own tests with test tones and the sub placed optimally for the listening vantage point to be squarely in an anti-node for very low sub-bass frequencies (below 40 hz), I came up with, to my ear, about 33 to 35 hz accurate frequency reproduction and topping out slightly above 100 hz --- this is with the threshold being half the peak volume. As far as I know this is quite good for a setup such as mine. A 12" Pioneer sub of equal cost and same setup was much higher at this threshold (about 40-42 hz). At sub frequencies this low, the difference is very noticeable in bass music tracks, and even in the low rumble of a concert bass drum, however metal/rock/country/pop or what have you, the difference will be unnoticeable.
In summation: this driver performs very well at it's intended purpose low frequency reproduction, in the price range of less than $100. If you intend to burp out 40-70 hz bass at incredible dB, you could probably do better (get a low-end kicker model or some such, they might handle more power, but it seems some of those drivers don't respond well in ultra sub-bass). Very happy with this purchase.

these subwoofers really really kick out the tunes. the powerhandling is way underrated and the can definitly handle more power than they say. i currently have them wired for 2 ohms and 1000 watts RMS between 2 of these and now my rear view mirror looks down when i crank the volume. these subs really get the job done and sound clean and undistorted the whole way through. also, they produce low notes beyond the rated 27Hertz.

A subwoofer with 14mm of REAL xmax for this price is unbelievable. It wasn't long ago a subwoofer of this quality would set you back quite a lot. The build quality is excellent from the heavy gauge stamped basket to the rubber coasted tinsel leads. All of the glue joints seemed neat and clean, I have no reason to believe this sub won't last me the life of my car.

In my opinion this woofer is completely underrated at 275W RMS. A 2" coil with vented pole piece means thermal compression should be minimal. A large linear throw, and progressive spider to handle high power transient peaks means the woofer is mechanically robust. As long as you have a moderately sized sealed enclosure or a PROPERLY designed ported box 400-500W should be no problem for this beast.

I've been running two of these in a sealed enclosure (1cf per sub no fill) with 300W RMS of class AB power. They're as efficient as any subwoofer I've used before, and handle everything down to 20Hz with plenty of control. The haven't struggled with anything I've thrown at them and just sound darn good with all types of music.

The only thing I don't like is the cheesy plastic dust-cap. I liked the old orange JBL logo with the peak wattage stamped proudly in large font. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

Was quite surprised in the sound quality and the difference in the bass that it produced compared to the difference surface design of my Rockfords.
Personal fan of the type R but will def do for a replacement and for time being.

My brother had an older version of these subs in a 01 civic with a bandpass box.sounded AMAZING for the amount he paid. now they are hooked up to the garage sound system. and yes, the neighbors do complain.