Check out this recent post of mine. I have an external Polk PSW10 subwoofer added to the stock system on my Tron and it sounds incredible.

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/subwoofers

Tron works really well with an internal sub upgrade. I don't like having an external sub hooked up and hanging out under the machine. External subs do sound good. But on this case so does the internal sub upgrade. Tron really shakes with a sub. You don't need back box upgrades. Not worth the money here.

I agree with the anti-clutter point of view ... But it sounds so darn good.

P.s., you always just push it all the way to the back and neatly tie-wrap the cords. Still sounds just as good.

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I looked at going the external sub route but it was working out more expensive than a FF kit. Ordered that as I have them in some of my other pins and they work well.

If you wait / watch, you can get this one for $90 shipped from amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Polk-Audio-10-Inch-Monitor-Subwoofer/dp/B0002KVQBA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

I have it on my TRON and love it...

And you can use it with two pins simulaneously (via Left and Right inputs).

where are you guys wiring these into on the machine again?

full ff kit and ex polk sub is amazing in tron. worth every penny imo.

even with standard speakers, you'll have glass rattle issues when you crack the vol really high. it's something that needs to be addressed anyway.

Simple two wire setup. Clip onto the leads on the subwoofer in the base cabinet. I routed the wire up into the rear of the cabinet through one of the vents.

you can also run it through the power cord hole. looks cleaner.

It does sound good, I have now tried both. Personally I would save or spend the same money and just place a Pinball Pro subwoofer right in the cabinet.

Excuse the dumb question, but is it harmful to hook up more than one pin to only one subwoofer?

I put alligator clips on the end of the speaker wire and just clipped it onto the 8" sub terminals. I have the 8" woofer and 10" sub powered...

You can hook up two, but not have them both on / playing at the same time...

No, the Polk has separate L and R leads. Although you have to make sure the polarity matches. I did have my Whitewater playing through my Roadshow until I switched the leads. It was entertaining for about 10 seconds, then I thought of possible damage and quit the screwing around....

I'm getting a humming sound when my external sub is turned on. I don't think it was doing that initially. Any ideas as to why?

I have to go the other way on this...having upgrade speaker systems in AFM and MM and a powered sub under XMEN I like the feel and sound of XMEN 10X better. The bass and sounds effects really make it a cool feeling.

I just watch for powered subs to pop up on local CL...bought 2 now and paid $50 and $40 for really nice ones!

the topic of powered subs has been thoroughly discussed on RGP:
http://rgparchive-removed.com/rgpforum/showthread.php?t=394842&highlight=sony+powered

I'm getting the same thing. A noticeable hiss. I'm guessing introduced by the speaker cable, because there is nothing coming out of the Tron speakers themselves. When i unplug the speaker cable, it goes away, so it is not the speaker. But as of yet I haven't figured out why exactly it is happening.

Anyone have a pic on the inside of a cabinet with this?

The humming is most likely comming from a ground issue you might need to get a ground loop isolator to get rid of the hum or ground the external sub to the machine.

I bought the same 10" Polk sub for my Tron Pro based on posts I saw here on pinside. It will never leave my Tron.

I left the backbox speakers intact and hooked up my external sub directly to the wires previously going to my factory cab speaker. I was going to clip on but decided to pull the factory Stern speaker (25W) right out. I mean why bother leaving it there? I installed it instead into my DM replacing the crappy cab speaker it had (an improvement actually).

I've played a friend's Tron Le with an installed internal sub. It sounded great and did not shake the glass. However, IMO the bass is not as good as my external sub. Mine 'feels' better The external sub is matched to its box while an internal sub works with the cabinet air space which is probably not ideal for that driver. With the external sub it is easy to manipulate the crossover point (within what is already being sent) as well as the sub volume all the while still allowing the pinball volume control to manage overall game volume including sub.

Price may be the deciding factor because both setups give good bass. I waited for a half off sale. Up here in Canada a FF Stern woofer kit would cost $45 to ship. Local shipping of the external sub was only $13 (and arrived in two days)... Overall price difference to me was negligible.

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Reviving an old thread...

There might be a filter or some sort of resistor on one of the cables going into the subwoofer inside the game. Do you clip on before or after this?

I was also wondering if it would be worth running all my pins to my receiver. My home theater is in the same room. Might save on cost of additional subs.

Would love to opt for the fidelity kit for inside Tron. Not sure if itd make a difference inside Avengers.

1) Avengers has great bass. Sub helps a lot
2) receivers have line level input not high level input. There's no line level out on a pinball game.
3) there is no cap, no filter and no resistor on the sub line in stern games.

Going to have a plug n play connector for this off the sound board soon.

So just an audio cable with alligator clips? I wouldn't mind just trying it out with an existing sub to see how it is.

I like to connect my external sub to the factory bottom cabinet speaker. That way you don not loose any mid-range audio.

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What is the easiest way to tell the + from the - on the internal sub on both Bally/Williams and Stern? I don't recall seeing them labeled. Trial and error? Does this cause any damage if you guess wrong?

Thanks, Dave

If you make the sub out of phase you lose bass due to phase cancellation .

Look closely at the speaker and note the stamped +- on the terminals.

Thanks, I will look at mine two pinball's I added the External subs to. I did not configure for this phase cancellation.

I have two pins connected to my sub using the left and right inputs. I was thinking of trying a line mixer to run all 4 pins to one sub. Good/bad idea?

I was told if you hook 2 pins up like that,voltage can actually run up one set of wires & damage the pins sound board. Because of this info,I went to Costco & bought 4 Pioneer powered subs for $89.00 each.

Hmmm, Thanks, I will look closer, I have seen some marked, but not all.

Thanks for the Tip!! Much appreciated!

Dave

Running into a problem with my sub... It's an older klipsh 10" with separate left and right leads. I attached the negative and positive to the sub (left/right) and connected the negative to the striped wire in the cab speaker and the positive to the other side (via quick disconnects).

The sub when used in other setups is very loud and bassey but for whatever reason I have it on max and it sounds really weak (there, but weak on twilight zone). Could it be wire gauge? Not sure what I'm doing wrong, any advice is welcome. Thanks!

Are you running it into the high level inputs of the sub or the low?

Lets see a picture of the control panel of the sub.

Striped is the positive. That may help a lil... On my lil pioneer I ran a jumper to the other channel which made it louder. I think it dropped the ohm load on the sub.. Something to think about a 4 ohm signal on an 8 ohm speaker will reduce the volume of the signal.. I'd check and see if your subs 4ohm

You can't just guess with a powered subwoofer. Randomly "trying" things is a sure way to blow the audio system of your pin. If in doubt post a picture, make & model of sub and others will help you out.

Side bar but on Metallica is the white stripped wire the negative ? I blew my sound board and cant figure out why.
Dummy me threw out the stern stock speaker.
First time I have an issue installing ff and external powered sub.
On Tron they both together rocked!

In the audio world the striped wire is *usually* the negative. But that being said, as far as audio goes reversing the positive and negative would only put cause the audio to be out of phase, that in itself would not cause damage to the output amplifier. From the amplifier to speaker it doesn't matter at all in a mono system, in a stereo system it doesn't matter as long as each speaker is connected the same way to keep them all in phase.

The common mistake is connecting amplified audio from your device (pinball machine or whatever) to line inputs of a powered subwoofer. Basically, it's connecting the two amplifiers back to back is what causes the damage. If your input signal is amplified already, you would need to connect this to special inputs(usually called 'speaker level' inputs). This special input has impedance matching components to reduce the input level back down to the line level that the subwoofer's amplifier can use.

I think I just had a bad board then because that's what I thought too. I used the speaker level inputs as I did on all my other games.

Here's some pics. Hard to see, but the negative striped wire is on the right lead of the cab sub and going to the negative terminal of the other sub. In my experience striped = negative and the cab sub has a striped wire going to the same terminal I applied my striped wire.

I did try swapping but it actually didn't make a difference. Weird thing is that the sub will power at the same strength with ONLY the negative wire attached at the terminal (no positive).

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Your negative wire is on the wrong terminal, it needs to go to the negative terminal closest to the positive (one terminal to the left)

Exactly.

I put it to the configuration suggested and if I plug the negative and positive on one side I get no sound at all from the external sub (the cab sub still works), but if only negative is attached to the terminal it will sound (not strong). What would make the external sub go completely silent if both terminals are plugged in but still sound if the positive is disconnected?

"powers" from the negative? What do you mean - you have audio working then?

Breaking this down....
Try the sub with a home audio system, if it works fine the problem is the game sound system. If it does not the problem is the sub.

Hook up a regular game speaker for the game, does it work now?

My hunch is either you have fried the sub or fried the games audio system, one or the other.

Solid black wire is negative. Striped wire is positive.... I know it's conceptually difficult but it's right.

This is correct statement for POWER wiring. The convention for audio wiring is that it does not matter as long as you connect x to x and y to y. Nine times out of ten you'll find that audio folks use the striped wire as negative, and nobody is going to punch out the the tenth guy who decided to designate his striped wire as positive in his audio wiring.

btw..I'm the tenth guy.

So on my STLE I am trying to figure out how to tell the negative speaker wire from the positive speaker wire on my game? One wire is yellow with a black stripe the other is yellow with a white stripe... Which is positive?(they arnt marked)

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Never mind the speaker is marked I guess my eyes are getting old
Good news is that this psw10 sub on ST kicks ass! freaking wowza