Audio Systems: car sterio, dual voice coil, ohm load

Question
pontiac, grand am. how do you hook up dual voice coil 12 inch subs to a single channel 1200 amp?
amp is sony, speakers are jl audio.

Answer
Chad,
I apoligize for the latenss of my reply. I've been slammed as of late with all sorts of problems.

Anyway, a single channel amp will still have a positive and negative terminal, and the subwoofer will have two sets of positive and negative terminals (pos-neg, pos-neg). I'm going to assume that the resistence per voice coil on your sub is 4 ohms (so it's a dual 4 ohm VC sub). I would recommend that you wire the subwoofer's voice coil in parallel with itself (one wire going from a positive terminal to the opposite negative terminal (not the terminal it's matched with),  and another wire going from the negative terminal to it's opposite positive terminal). From there you will hook the subwoofer up to the amplifier (following the directions that came with the amp - there should be some and I'm not entirely familiar with Sony amps).

One thing to note: wiring a dual 4 ohm VC subwoofer in parallel will reduce the overall resistance that the amp 'sees' to 2 ohms ((4 ohms x 4 ohms)/(4 ohms + 4 ohms)). If you wire the subwoofer's VCs in series (pos-pos and neg-neg wiring), then wire the sub to the amp, the amp will 'see' an overall resistance of 8 ohms (4 ohms + 4 ohms). If your amp is rated 1200 watts at 2 ohms, then the parallel wiring is the way to go. If it's rated 1200 watts at 4 ohms, then the series wiring is the way to go. In theory if the amp is rated at 4 ohms and you present it with a 2 ohm load, the amp's power output will double. However, if the amp is rated at 4 ohms and presented with an 8 ohm load, it will only produce 1/2 the amount of power it was rated at. But you also need to look at what your sub is rated at. You don't want to excessively overpower the sub, as that would blow it up real fast. It's better off to be on the side of caution and have the sub get less power as oppose to more (in relation to its' RMS rating). I hope this helps.

Best Of Luck,
Alan