Rockford Fosgate Punch P3L-S12 Enclosure

Using the newest P3 Punch shallow transducers, (not yet on the web anywhere else) this is one of two skinny enclosures designed by the Rockford Corporation. The other is a ten inch based job called P3L-S10. It has internal wiring by Rockford Accessories and a simple speaker connection cup with paired spring terminals on one end of the box. Rated at 4 Ohms, it is carpeted and has an embroidered Rockford logo on one corner and a metal logo badge on the surface to the rear. I removed the four screws and the panel and found a circular hole in the half inch MDF with the magnet of the driver right up against it. This steel cover plate bears a ring of soft rubbery acoustic absorber on its inside face and the box has a filling of synthetic acoustic wadding. The tolerances are amazingly tight in there, as without the hole, the woofer would not fit in the remarkably skinny box. The driver has a simple concave diaphragm (you can see it horribly magnifying my face like a shiny lens in the video and a pretty Aluminium trim ring fixed to the front for ornamentation. The box tapers vertically from five and a quarter inches deep at the base to just three and a quarter inches deep at the top, or from 134mm to 83mm. The speaker inside is a Dual Voice Coil design and you get a set of two short Steel brackets and paired screw fixings to use to secure the box upright behind say, the seats in a pick up truck, or else stood to one side or the very back of a boot area that it is desirous to preserve the cubic thereof. It is the thinnest box I have seen bar the Pioneer TS-WX77A and that uses six inch drivers and is active with far less power than this unit is reputed to be capable of using. It was tested carefully on a PowerBass XA3000D with an Odyssey battery and StreetWires power and JL Audio signal interconnects.
– Half inch MDF enclosure with high density carpet covering
– Power Handling: 400w RMS (800w max)
– Kevlar fibre reinforced semi-pressed paper pulp cone
– High temperature design voice coil assembly with spun-laced Nomex insulating reinforcement collar
– Die cast Aluminium low-profile chassis
– High density compressed half roll sealed poly foam surround
– Dual 2 Ohm voice coils, wired in series internally
– Nickel plated 10-AWG push terminals; two sets on sub, one on outside of box
– Tear and fatigue resistant poly cotton spider with stitched tinsel leads
– Internal box volume 0.6 cu ft or 16.99 litres
– HxWxD 13.5in x 27.375in x 5.25in to 3.25in tapered (343mm x 696mm x 134 to 83mm)
Review by Adam Rayner
Shallow subwoofers remind me of Wile E. Coyote after he has had a terrible head-on collision accident with a train. He goes all truncated front-to-back. So it is with these squeezed-up designs of sub. There are loads of pickups and loads of folks who’ll not want to put a six cubic foot shed in the estate car that weighs a whole dead cow’s worth. They would rather have something that’ll really disappear into their limited cubic. Hence the need to make bass in less space. The idea with them all is to be able to provide a real, proper bass end without compromise by clever design of the driver and box it goes in.
JL Audio have the 13TW5.3, I have seen a new Pioneer one and have reviewed a Diamond Audio Hex S12.4 that uses a front mounted Neodymium magnet. Both of those use some clever stuff to get around the need to push a cone from behind. One has the Neo magnet in front of the cone, the other a huge coil in a big motor assembly almost concentric with the cone rather than in front or behind. The exact design of this Rockford one would have been clearer to see if I had fully dismantled it, but the manual gives a good exploded view and you can see that it has a bumped and dished back plate and is well made.
It was hooked up and I went live and direct to More Bass, More Boom, More Bottom by the legendary Power Supply. It has huge drops and big sweeps and it a real pig of a disc to play properly since the bass is always shifting and dropping.
While I was impressed with what the other woofers could do in the boxes I got to use, this product comprises an enclosure designed by the same folks who specified the actual woofer. The marriage is perfect and despite there being so little cubic inside the box, the woofer does bounce against it beautifully and goes in and out a hell of a long way. The cone control is as good as anything Rockford have ever made and the end result is a lovely sound.
The bass is tight and fast, rich and melodic and sounds like a well matched woofer and sealed box of normal size, with tremendous dropping power to the limit of a very wobbly and compliant woofer’s travel. The lowest 25Hz blue led column on the Audio Control SA-3055RTA was lighting up like a good ‘un. There isn’t a huge amount of energy right down at 25Hz on even a disc as mad as Power Supply and also the PowerBass amplifier has an undefeatable 20Hz minimum subsonic filter, so I feel a change of reference bass amp coming on but the sound was absurdly good.
It wasn’t an issue about ‘Can a shallow sub sound any good?’ but more about just how good it was versus everything else out there, including mad end �600 SQ things! The VFM is high as a result, for although you might feel it’s a lot to pay for a skinny MDF box, you are really paying for the suck-it-and-see testing and R&D that goes into these things.
Rockford Fosgate have a huge reputation, particularly with awesome bass and this is no slouch when it comes to upholding their tradition. A superb skinny box that sounds as badass and beefy as a full size one, the immediate daft corollary was, ‘Wow I could line twenty of these puppies up in my huge Volvo Boot, all stood up like daughter boards in a posh piece of electronics’ But that’s as daft as suggesting you use it as a ghetto blaster on your shoulder (like some fool said in the video) for it does the job better than anything else I have yet heard that can go in such a skinny place.
A serious woofer for those who need to keep cubic and weight down and deserving of one of our highest Talk Audio Magazine accolades, this earns a Talk Audio Best Buy flag.
Sound Quality 9.0
Build Quality 10.0
Power Handling 9.0
Efficiency 9.0
Value For Money 9.0
Overall rating 9.2