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Mark Levinson sub replacement with aftermarket sub (Detailed pics)
Hey guys I know this has been covered but there are some important pieces in other threads that have not been covered. I hope this can help some others on here to clear up some of the same questions I had when looking to replace my stock ML sub. Since the day I bought my 04 LS430 the stock Mark Levinson sub was blown. I didn't want to spend over $300 for a new one but was not sure about replacing it with an aftermarket sub either due to the ohm's not being the same. I end up going with the Polk Audio DB840DVC for $50 on Amazon and it sounds great. I have it wired as 8ohm. I also used the stock subwoofer bracket to make sure it was a perfect fit. I don't have photo's of the removal process but The rear seat has to come out. Follow BIGGZ rear seat removal in the link below:
This picture shows the dual voice coils wired as an 8ohm load. Positive on one side to the negative on the other opposite side.
If you are handy with a soldering iron, it's the best way to go. Male and female ends can be tapped onto the wire as well if you want to remove them at a later time. I have no intention to use this sub in anything else so I chose to solder them.
All four of these tabs need trimmed back just slightly.
You must be sure when re-installing that the bracket faces this direction and the plug from the subwoofer is on the passenger side when installing back in the car.
Screw the two parts of the bracket back together. My sub is sideways due to the location of the connections and the way it has to sit in the bracket for re-installation.
You will need to use a soldering iron to remove the factory plug from the ML sub. It will be used here. The negative will be soldered onto the negative on the sub. The blue wire goes from the positive on one side around to the negative on the other set of connectors on the opposite side of the sub so that it is wired as 8ohm. I used a short piece of red wire to extend the factory red wire from the plug to the other side of the sub.
This photo from WWW.Crutchfield.com also shows how to wire a DVC 4ohm sub to run 8ohm.
A word of caution... The LS430 Mark Levinson amp is designed to drive a 14.5-ohms subwoofer. Reducing the resistance to 8-ohms will allow too much current to flow. However, I believe the ML amp has over-current protection circuitry (which will cut out to protect the amp), but suggest that you don’t just crank-it-up and risk frying your amp.
Aging electronic parts and their connections to the printed circuit board (PCB) are more vulnerable to failure due to temperature cycling and fatigue. For the 12-year-old Mark Levinson amp you have, the thermally induced stresses and strains caused by the excessive current flow may produce solder fatigue cracks, fractures in electronic components, or the like.
There have been more threads and posts on this subject than I can count. Good luck with your install, but keep a savings available for a replacement amp which is not cheap.
Thanks for sharing the info and your experience. An 8 or 12 ohm replacement sub should be just fine with the ML amp. A 2 or 4 ohm sub would definitely cause the amp some grief. It is important to note that the nominal ohm rating on any speaker is a general measurement only. An individual speaker varies its ohm "rating" (essentially its electrical resistance) across frequencies. Two different speakers each rated at 8 ohms nominal could had significantly different resistance profiles to a specific amp based on where and how they are used and the signal and power they are "fed". So an 8 ohm rated replacement sub could be just fine with ML amp even at relatively high volume volume while a different speaker with same 8 ohm rating might be a problem particularly at high volume where the amp can start "clipping". I don't remember anyone on the forum putting in an 8 ohm replacement sub and reporting the ML amp died specifically as a result of the new speaker. My guess is that even the OEM sub when blown (with the typical disintegrated surround) might present roughly similar load profile to the amp as a slightly lower ohm rated speaker.
Speaker cone rattles (foam surround deteriorates and is not attached to the speaker cone edge), or the speaker coil is fried and little if any bass sound is heard (or felt).
If you had a 8 ohm nominal impedance dual voice coil subwoofer wired in series, you could achieve 16 ohm impedance and not worry about cranking it up.
Another piece of the puzzle is the sub's efficiency. If you put a sub with lower efficiency than the stock one and you have no way of changing the gain on the sub channel, you are going to have quieter low frequency output for a given volume setting.
Speaker cone rattles (foam surround deteriorates and is not attached to the speaker cone edge), or the speaker coil is fried and little if any bass sound is heard (or felt).
Yes, I've repaired subs and door speakers with new speaker foam from Simply Speakers. Haven't had a speaker coil fail, but that would not be a DIY repair.
There have been more threads and posts on this subject than I can count. Good luck with your install, but keep a savings available for a replacement amp which is not cheap.
As Bocatrip said, there have been many, many posts about speakers and woofers. One of the very important distinctions we must keep in mind is that actual speaker impedance varies with frequency. For convenience, speaker manufacturers market their products in terms of Nominal Impedance, which approximates the DC resistance of the voice coil in the speaker.
The best way to find out the impedance of a speaker is to read it off a label on the speaker. If the speaker is unlabeled, you can attempt to measure speaker impedance with an Ohm-meter set for 20 ohms full-scale. The ohm meter will read slightly low as follow:
For a 4-ohm rated speaker, the Ohm-meter will read between 3 to 3.5 ohms
For a 8-ohm rated speaker, the Ohm-meter will read between 6 to 7.5 ohms
For a 16-ohm rated speaker, the Ohm-meter will read between 13 to 15 ohms
The LS430 sub-woofer measures 14.5-ohm. The best replacement for this application should have a nominal impedance rating of 16-ohm.
Any 8" 8+8 ohms dual voice cone (DVC) woofer wired in series will yield nominal impedance rating of 16-ohm. Dayton Audio SD215A-88 DVC Subwoofer is one example of woofer that meets this specification.
Hey guys I know this has been covered but there are some important pieces in other threads that have not been covered. I hope this can help some others on here to clear up some of the same questions I had when looking to replace my stock ML sub. Since the day I bought my 04 LS430 the stock Mark Levinson sub was blown. I didn't want to spend over $300 for a new one but was not sure about replacing it with an aftermarket sub either due to the ohm's not being the same. I end up going with the Polk Audio DB840DVC for $50 on Amazon and it sounds great. I have it wired as 8ohm. I also used the stock subwoofer bracket to make sure it was a perfect fit. I don't have photo's of the removal process but The rear seat has to come out. Follow BIGGZ rear seat removal in the link below:
Pwroz, like some, I too needed to replace my sub, but instead of the Polk, I bought and installed the Kicker. After realizing it wasn't 8 ohm as noted, but 4 ohm, I decided to try my hand at replacing the foam of my ML sub. This was done over the past three weeks, and I'd used the Pyramid 8 ohm for over a year, but always felt I was missing something by being very careful with the volume and bass. Replacing the foam wasn't so difficult, and glad I did, cause the ML sub sounds great. And I'm not in fear of losing my amp any longer. I used the instructions and kit from Simple Speakers. Both the Kicker and the Polk are really nice looking speakers, but after installing the ML sub, I now understand why ML was picked to go in the Lexus LS 430. https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...-01-03-ul.html
mmmmmmmmmmm
This picture shows the dual voice coils wired as an 8ohm load. Positive on one side to the negative on the other opposite side.
If you are handy with a soldering iron, it's the best way to go. Male and female ends can be tapped onto the wire as well if you want to remove them at a later time. I have no intention to use this sub in anything else so I chose to solder them.
All four of these tabs need trimmed back just slightly.
You must be sure when re-installing that the bracket faces this direction and the plug from the subwoofer is on the passenger side when installing back in the car.
Screw the two parts of the bracket back together. My sub is sideways due to the location of the connections and the way it has to sit in the bracket for re-installation.
You will need to use a soldering iron to remove the factory plug from the ML sub. It will be used here. The negative will be soldered onto the negative on the sub. The blue wire goes from the positive on one side around to the negative on the other set of connectors on the opposite side of the sub so that it is wired as 8ohm. I used a short piece of red wire to extend the factory red wire from the plug to the other side of the sub.
This photo from WWW.Crutchfield.com also shows how to wire a DVC 4ohm sub to run 8ohm.
03-21-16, 09:23 PM
Mark Levinson sub replacement with aftermarket sub (Detailed pics)
