I recently purchased a dual voice coil sub (used) and one of the voice coils is dead. The other coil is fine.

Can I run this thing on a single voice coil? Will the speaker performance be the same as a single voice coil sub, or will I be losing performance compared to a single voice coil sub?

I understand that I'm now running the speaker at 4 ohms (instead of 2 or 8). Other than that, is there anything wrong with this?

 

Well, I did a bit more digging, and it seems that I should be fine. I just need to observe the power limits of the single voice coil (and not power it like I'm driving two voice coils) - which makes perfect sense. I'm beginning to think that the woofer will behave exactly the same - but I'm just making my amp's life easier by providing a 4 ohm load vs. the 2 ohm load I was planning on...

I'm curious if anybody can comment from experience on this. There are lots of conflicting ideas out there when you google this...

 

yes you can run one coil and the power rating is half of what it was (or a bit less than half). it won't behave exactly the same since it was designed to operate with both coils, but it will work.

yes, there is conflicting information. you can do it forever without issues if you don't push the sub too hard. lots of people damage subs doing this because they try to get too much output and clip the amp - basically overpowering the single coil.

listen to the sub - distortion, clipping, and mechanical limits are plainly audible.

 

Thanks for the input. Here is an update for anyone searching in the future:

I swapped out subs last night. I hooked up the single working voice coil of this new sub and tried it out. Just like we predicted, it sounds fine. While I can't comment on how it sounded with both voice coils connected, it currently sounds deep, smooth, and fairly tight. I'm going to dial it in and run it.

Power output won't be a problem - I'm running my main speakers off the head unit - so I have the amp throttled down considerably so as to not over power the cabin speakers. I clearly cannot hear any distortion/clipping/bottoming-out/fluttering/etc...