With stipud's suggestion, I am sharing a little of what we (SSA or Sound Solutions Audio) are working on. We, as a brand, are still very small in size and market share, but we are 100% full boar on growth of the brand. For the most part, our following is the Do-It-Yourself'er that is after something a little different and cares enough to do their research to find a better value. We are holding strong to our 'made in the USA' beliefs too. And to my fellow PG heads, we pose zero threat to PG business.
So in case anyone reading does not know, we have three existing lines:
>>> SSA Dcon: An over hung 2" copper D4/S4 coil, small enclosure needs, efficient, great value, sound quality biased sub woofer that can really surprise and is one of the last American made ones left in the segment. 300 watt ratting. Comes in 10"/12" with the 8" model planned and kind of on the way. There is a very nice review on here of one.
SSA "Fcon": (still in prototyping stages and name not official) Overhung, 3" copper D2/D4 coil, small to medium enclosure needs, efficient , high value, SQ leaning sub woofer that is planned to become the meat & potatoes of the line up. Planned 500-600 watt ratting. Meant to fill the big gap between the Dcon and Icon. The every man SQ sub, that has potential for great output while keeping composure. 10"/12" planned.
>>> SSA Icon: Our founding original driver, the one that we have built our brand on. It launched in 2007. A long 3" copper/aluminum D2/D1 coil driver, good excursion, mid - large enclosure size, 1000 watt rating, that is sound quality in primary intent and design, massive low end octave presence. Due to demands and slight generational tweaks over the years, it has been forced to become a little more abuse tolerant so it's output capabilities have stepped up along with thermal limits etc. (hence the addition of aluminum coil, sandwiched leads, upgraded spiders, single dish cone dust cap and so on. The heart and soul of our line up, and the benchmark of which we hold the rest of our speakers too. 10"/12"/15" models.
>>> SSA Xcon: The all out super sub. 3" very long aluminum D2/D1 coil, machined in shorting ring, 31mm Xmax goliath that is meant to be at the top of the heap of non competition drivers. Meaning not an SPL driver, but a purpose built sound quality focused driver that has huge Xmax and big power handling with excellent sound.
There are two more models planned, but I am not going to get into those at this time, as one may come out before the Fcon. Ok, so now that I got that sort of out of the way, here are a few photo's of the most recent "Fcon" prototype we are about to begin testing:
The motor is a little scratched up due to modifications and changes along the way, not to mention testing. This prototype has a hand wound 4 ohm SVC coil at the moment. Mark (the other 1/2 of SSA), will be doing his usually abuse testing on this prototype shortly. Followed up by my critical listening testing in a large number of 12" boxes. Just a tiny window into our recent goings on, there is so much more, but I can get into those at another time in another topic.
He hasn't been holding out, you just missed it! We had a Dcon demo ring not very long ago. I ended up buying my own Dcon afterwards, and I think some other people bought Icons?
Gotta say I love my Dcon. Every time I look at it it puts a grin on my face. For the cash it is insanely well built... very stout for a mere 300 watt driver! Such a sweet, raw oldschool sub appearance.
I wish I had the balls to install my Ti1200.1, so I could try out an Xcon
denim wrote:No pricing set just yet, but we have a target.
Any idea on a release date for the Fcon? I've been wanting to buy an Icon, but current issues with my system has prevented me from spending any cash on anything but fixing the issues it has. It sounds like the Fcon would be a better fit than the Icon as I only have 500 watts to work with.
denim wrote:No pricing set just yet, but we have a target.
Any idea on a release date for the Fcon? I've been wanting to buy an Icon, but current issues with my system has prevented me from spending any cash on anything but fixing the issues it has. It sounds like the Fcon would be a better fit than the Icon as I only have 500 watts to work with.
We have not set a release date, as all ferrite comes from China (major hurdle we cannot get around), we are probably going to be up against Chinese new year. So I could be spring of 2011. The Icon does not need 1000 watts, I rode around for a while with a single 12 with only 240 watts with great performance. But have you considered the Dcon or the RSDC?
ttocs wrote:
how long you been holding this crap out on us?
As mentioned above, I did post about it in the past on here. I am just not a big horn tooter.
With that said there are 3 models in the works, of the 3, the Fcon is the farthest along in the process, but could be the last of the 3 released due to timing with the magnets.
When we have functional prototypes for the other two models, along with more information, I will post up some info on them.
denim wrote:No pricing set just yet, but we have a target.
Any idea on a release date for the Fcon? I've been wanting to buy an Icon, but current issues with my system has prevented me from spending any cash on anything but fixing the issues it has. It sounds like the Fcon would be a better fit than the Icon as I only have 500 watts to work with.
We have not set a release date, as all ferrite comes from China (major hurdle we cannot get around), we are probably going to be up against Chinese new year. So I could be spring of 2011. The Icon does not need 1000 watts, I rode around for a while with a single 12 with only 240 watts with great performance. But have you considered the Dcon or the RSDC?
I've considered the Dcon and I am currently running the RSDC in my other vehicle with great results, but I wanted to give the Icon a try. Seems like a great sub and I've heard a lot of good things about it over on the SSA forum.
