Ground Zero GZRW 12XD-AL Subwoofer

Product Details
Manufacturer: Ground Zero
Distributor: Car Audio Direct
Website: link
& link
Typical Suggested Selling price: £169.99 (CAD Price £139.99)
A weighty woofer from the Radioactive series with a lot of bling appeal. It has cut surfaces to the handsome cast basket, making it black-and-silvery-shiny in looks. The magnet has a Chromed lower pole plate and this has branding upon it, as does the thick and weighty rubber boot around the Ferrite of the substantial magnet assembly. The woofer has a whopping two and a half inch voice coil and is rated at a very high half-kilowatt RMS as in continuous! That’s enough to make toast with, or heat a bedroom
The cone is made of Aluminium and is in two parts with an inverted dust dome and the two voice coils are both two Ohm rated. Thus, this woofer can look like a four Ohm, or ‘˜normal’ woofer, or it can show two lots of two Ohms to the Y-lead-fed paired amp channels of a four channel amplifier to draw the best out of a ‘˜normal’ amp. Or for true exotic and potent amplifiers that enjoy super-low impedance loads, you can parallel the two coils and it’ll look like a single lonely Ohm and suck the bejasus out of a decent high end (but still quite small) bass monoblock.
The top roll surround is huge with a very large diameter of around an inch and a half so it is designed to really travel in and out a long way.
I used a Clarion APX1301E mono amplifier and used the two Ohm coils in series so they looked like a four Ohm load, at which the Clarion would be making a true 300 watts. The GZ ate the lot and loved it.
– Frequency response: Not quoted but plays ALL of ‘Woofer Excursion Test’
– Power Handling: 500w RMS
– two-piece inverted-dome Aluminium metal cone
– Die cast Aluminium chassis with shiny cut surfaces
– Large diameter foam top roll surround
– Dual 2 Ohm voice coils
– Nickel plated push terminals ready to accept 8 gauge wire
– Voice Coil Diameter: 2.5 inch (63mm)
– Mounting depth 150mm
– Efficiency: 88dB 1w/1M
– Fms: 31.1Hz
– Qes: 0.45
– Qms: 10.37
– Qts: 0.43
– Xmax: 20mm
– Vas: 48 Litres



Editor review : Ground Zero GZRW 12XD-AL Subwoofer

This woofer sounded quite pretty with my lovely old Frankie Goes To Hollywood CD, rocking some really deep and grunty bass from the Pioneer DEH-P88RSII reference headunit we use on Talk Audio.
And then, I thought to hell with ‘˜quite pretty’ let’s stick something Rright UP it!
I had been using some Alpine speakers from the Type-R SPR series the SPR-60C components and the SPR-69 ovals on a Kappa amp from Infinity and they had to be turned back a little as they are so very efficient. But I soon had the gain structure of my test rig system sussed and really messed about with this driver. Once again, marvelling at the strength and resistance to decay the test rig’s absurd Odyssey battery is still presenting me with no change at all in two years in its ability to sit around, then be abused and yet hold a wicked float voltage forever and loving the huge audio I was making.
So it was Bass Boom Bottom by ‘Power Supply’ and the infamous track six that starts, ‘Woofer Excursion test, warning, reduce volume level as the following recording may ‘ and then it goes on to let you know that their recording can kill woofers and blow your stuff up. And it’s true, I have made more smelly room atmosphere of burned voice coil adhesive with this track than any other. It’s silly and offensive and I bloody love it as it drops and wobbles and does its very best to make your bloody cones jump out of their chassis and make a mark of their logo on your bloody headlining.
Anyway, this subwoofer, while sounding pretty good and even a tad musical at even all but imperceptibly low volume levels, changes character when you drive it hard like the engine from Honda called V-Tech that varies its cams as you rev up. It ate the entirety of the woofer excursion test and just loved it, playing low, deep and sonorous. It is not a ‘˜fast’ or even particularly ‘˜tight’ a woofer like say a Morel or a high end JL Audio but oh Lordy is it rich, fat, deep and able! This thing shakes what is in fact a pretty damn big weight of cone to and fro with real weight and scale and authority and this woofer will slap a cheapie fifteen into submission in my opinion as it has such a phat travel.
So, not a ‘˜HiFi’ subwoofer (although I suspect them of making high SQ woofers as well, from what I have read) but a really cool and affordable example of no-compromise unapologetic Basshead Hooligans’ Dream Item. This is a ‘˜Radioactive’ series subwoofer and Ground Zero Audio do go much higher in cost and madness but for what this item is priced at this is a lot of woofer for the money and will be beloved of the dance music boom people.
Or those involved in elephant research in the Serengeti.
Overall 8.4
Sound Quality 7
Build Quality 9
Power Handling 10
Efficiency 8
Value For Money 8