Alpine Type S 12"

I am a car audio enthusiast, but I am still learning. I recently installed an almost full apline set. Sony head-unit, Alpine type S front and rear speakers, 2 12" Alpine Type S subs, MRD-M501 Sub amp, and T420 speaker amp. The two channel amp was a mistake, but wiring the 4 ohm speakers in parallel brought it down to 2 ohms so it sounds good anyways. I bought everything except the head-unit off an e-bay site. Within a month I turned my two subs into to 12 lbs paper-weights. I have no warranty on them either since I did the e-bay store, lol, oh well. Anyways there is a plastic piece covering the terminal wires which cracked off (I think it was because of the cold weather expanding it and not entirely from vibrations, because they worked fine, then the car sat in 2 feet of snow for about a week, and when I finally took it out...no subs. I couldn't reattach this piece, on one of the two subs a wire actually ripped off of the terminal. I resoldered this wire. The plastic piece was holding down one part I am not sure of the name, it is that rippled orange thick fabric like material that goes straight across (not cone shaped). Without that small 2 inch piece of plastic holding this down (wow, how secure) that hole ripply thing moved (it has a black plastic rim) and the rim was hitting against the metal basket. This wasn't the sound I wanted from subs, lol. But I used 18 guage metal wire (used for hanging pictures) and tied down this piece to the spokes of the cage. This seems to have them working fine, and in fact is a lot more sturdy than alpines design.
I was just wondering if anyone else had these subs and this problem? And if someone could tell me the name of that orange ripply fabric thing, lol, I am a newbie but I am quickly learning. :)

the orange thing is called the spider.

this is what happens when u buy stuff off ebay.

Thanx, well with my ghetto rigged spider, the sub seems to be able to get louder without rattling. Probably cuz I have it held down in five places instead of one like the original design. Would you recommend Audiobahn subs over the Alpine? Or is there any other brands I should consider in the future?

audiobahn is crap when it comes to sound quality. they are ok if you like distorted boomy bass without any defined bass.


alpine over audiobahn

also look into Ascendant audio. they are the latest craze right now .lol

One other question that I have been trying to figure out. In this case I have two 300 watt subwoofers and one 275 watt amp. If say I crank it up all the way, will each sub sound like its getting 275 watts, or is it like split between the two, each one sounds like 137.5 watts?

power will be split up if you wired it correctly

I wired the dual voice coils in series, then I wired the subs in paralellel. So if I wanted to get 300 watts to each sub, I would get a 600 watt amp?