Stereo Amp question

[casurfer911]

I have an older JL 10" sub and box that is ready to be hooked up for my trunk. I just want a small cheap amp that can drive the sub. What should i be looking for? I looked on ebay and all i could find were, 5 million watt, no-name amps that come with woofers. any suggestions. I dont want a lot of bass, just something that will compliment my music.

[genphreak]

I have an older JL 10" sub and box that is ready to be hooked up for my trunk. I just want a small cheap amp that can drive the sub. What should i be looking for? I looked on ebay and all i could find were, 5 million watt, no-name amps that come with woofers. any suggestions. I dont want a lot of bass, just something that will compliment my music.

ANythign will do, but go for big and well built. You can;t have too much power in your amp; too little causes it to reach its maximum output before the speaker does and then the transistors essentially jam a full square wave overloead current to the sub (which will blow pretty much any speaker of any size) whereas a 1000W amp connected to a 100W speaker will make the speaker distort (giving you advance warning of any damage that could occur if the volume was to be incresed even more). Makes sure you mount it under the back shelf- I have a 4x200W monster in mine which works just fine on a 15" sub box. Cheap amps are fine, just make sure it does work properly first (people are always connecting them wrong and blowing them up, then selling them on eBay) or get a new one. Good chinese cheapies can be got for $100 anywhere these days.... GP

btw; I run high-level inputs from my head unit thru the stock Front+Rear wiring to the standard 535i amp. I tap the rear ones off to my sub amp which has high-level inputs. The sub has its own sub cross-over built in. All other ways of doing this in an e34 will likely result in ignition noise... some have probably achieved it, but I'm not aware of the specifics on how to do it sucesfullly using low-level inputs from the head unit for example.

I know this is not a purist setup but this way I leave the stock system intact and get the extra volume and bass I want. I hate carving up my car to fit cost-consciously selected stereo gear, this is a very cheap way to do ti with good results.