When it comes to car audio brands with flair, confidence, panache-whatever you choose to call it-only a few companies really stick out. Rockford Fosgate happens to be one of those brands. The company has been able to maintain an image of quality. "Mediocrity," "normal," and "ordinary" are apparently not part of Rockford Corps' philosophy. This, in part, has helped root Rockford's success, one built on a long history of mold-breaking cosmetics and quality sound reproduction.
It's been nearly a year since CA&E last looked at (and gave high praise to) Rockford Fosgate product [see July 05 issue]. This month, the company submitted a couple copies of a 12" subwoofer from their reasonably priced Punch P2 series. The P212S4 certainly is not a letdown in the looks department and definitely plays its part in upholding the company image. The image I speak of goes beyond the cosmetics and can be viewed in Rockford's "American Attitude."
Recent years have yielded many changes in the car audio market with the "Made in USA" tagline far from being common speak. So, it was a surprise to see the heroic label (which at one time had great emphasis placed upon it) printed on the packaging and lower quadrant of the P212S4 woofer. I bring this to light because most Asian speaker producers, even today, lack the same build quality and quality control measures instituted by American speaker builders. However, that's not to say that all of the parts are fashioned stateside, as the packaging disclaims, "using domestic and globally sourced components." With that said, let's take a look at how this sub is constructed.
Construction
The P212S4 is built on a fairly thick, proprietary 4-spoke stamped steel frame finished in a fiery-red satin paint with 24 cooling slots perforated through the frame under the spider. Flowing off the rear of the frame is a silver injection-molded plastic motor cover emblazoned with the RF logo, a recess for the compression-style terminals mounted to the frame, and 24 slots that mate up with those on the frame. Interestingly, the cover can easily be popped off since it is held in place by magnetic force; a circular metal ring mounted within the plastic body clings to the back of the motor structure without glue or clips. With the cover off, one can view a 2-piece ferrite magnet measuring a total of 33mm (1.3") tall with a width of 128mm (5"). This attaches to the 9mm top plate that is staked onto the frame via 6 pressure stamped nubbins. The backside of the motor consists of the return for the magnetic structure, the t-yoke (pole piece and back plate as one). The back plate measures in at 8mm thick and has a modest 8mm bumped for extended voice coil travel while its pole has a 10mm extension above the magnetic gap to better the flux (magnetic energy) field. At the center of the pole is a 28mm vent that steps down to a 22mm exit at the rear of the motor to aid in cooling the 2"-diameter voice coil. The coil is of the 4-layer variety and has a height of 30.5mm (1.2") and is wound over a black anodized-aluminum former. A linear 7" poly-cotton spider that handles most of the compliance for the driver is mounted at the neck of the cone on the former and to the frame 1" above the top plate.
On top of the woofer is 1/4-round plastic beauty ring that offers a nice cosmetic touch. Not only does it conceal four of the eight mounting screws, it also covers the edge of the wide 28mm (1.1") compressed foam surround. The surround keeps the leading edge of the cone in perfect alignment. Not uncommon, the cone is comprised of two pieces. The top piece is sort of an oversized dust cap that is 8" in diameter with a parabolic shape. It's made of a clear plastic that has a weave texture on its backside and "Punch" and "P2" logos imbedded within. The latter two are coated with a reflective silver paint while the rest of the cone is painted a metallic gray that gives it an almost carbon-fiber look. Behind the scenes is a second cone made from an injection-molded polypropylene with a highlighted, silver-painted edge that mates almost seamlessly with the parabolic dust cap. All of this work pays off as it gives the P212S4 quite a stunning appearance.
Manual
The manual is about as basic as they come. At four pages in length, you might expect to have some good information and advice about installing your new sub. Instead, you'll find that page one is simply a cover page listing the 16 single voice coil subwoofers that are contained in the manual. Crack it open to the center spread and you have no less than eight illustrations of enclosures, each one relating to two or four woofers, half of them sealed and the others vented. The rest of the spread contains parameters for the 16 subwoofers and some cautions, brief wiring configurations and basic box dimension calculations, the latter three explained in five languages. The final page lists the warranty-this is actually the most comprehensive information within the manual, explaining what is and is not covered and service information. For those of you who were wondering, the warranty on the P212S4 is one year.
Installation
Putting a sub in the wrong enclosure could yield certain disappointment. Quite often manufacturers make running changes to product and, as we've noted in the past, don't always update the parameters in the manual or on the web. So, as usual, a phone call was placed to one of those industry people that we like to name in our articles. This round I contacted Kevin Kuenzie, marketing coordinator at Rockford Corp, for a little advice (we'll refer to him as the "fall guy" if anything goes wrong). Kuenzie recommended a 0.85ft3 sealed enclosure just as specified in the manual. Impressed by the small required enclosure size, I headed out to the shop to slice and dice some wood. On the way I happened across one of my test boxes that measured 1.27ft3 internal volume and a series of 4 x 4 wood blocks cut to various lengths. The blocks are arranged so that they bolt into the enclosure to adjust the internal volume. With three of the blocks in place, I was able to get the enclosure to an almost perfect 0.85ft3 after deducting the speaker displacement (0.049ft3). Seeing that this was nearly dead on with Kuenzie's recommendations, I decided to save some time (and trees) and use the enclosure for the test.