SNG Audio Jatt Series JT-12

21st March 2009 Adam Rayner

A twelve inch subwoofer with an elaborate cast Aluminium chassis and top trim ring. The subwoofer has the characteristics of some of the cheap-but-blingy drivers we have seen from some woeful low-end brands (Berolina and Ballistic, oh yummy!) but like the original Mini, this has been designed to deliver better engineering (in this case street bass) from an affordable package. The designers are not old grunters but youthful types with a love of the automotive music environment and they have managed to cram in some real high power features for the money. For one, it has a very high power handling of 800w RMS and a mad 1,600w peak rating. It has flat tinsel leads that are adhered to the spider and the excursion is high with a big real rubber surround. I gather that a cheaper foam top roll suspension was tried and rejected. The chassis is deep and is a bit wider than normal, so may need its own correct diameter hole (295mm) cutting to fit. It was tested in the Acoustic Wood sealed enclosure with the flush fitted Neutrik Speakon connection system.
It is one of the prettiest woofers I have ever seen and I was impressed by the amount of bite the spring loaded speaker terminals provided and the fact that they were brought together at the same point on the chassis to make the mounting of series speaker cables easier. They have a wide aperture and will take greater than 4mm conductors. The trim ring and other parts have the words ‘Jatt Series’ emblazoned upon them. The front of the cone is woven black Kevlar and the back is rugged non-pressed paper pulp. The cone has an SNG badge stuck to an indentation on the front you need to check out where your mounting holes will be going in order to get this showing correctly horizontal. The voice coil is a long way back of the cone on along yoke as the travel or cone XMAX of the device is good and high.
– Frequency response: 20Hz to 100Hz
– Power Handling: 800w RMS (1.6kw max)
– Kevlar reinforced front, paper pulp backed cone
– Die cast Aluminium chassis
– Cast Aluminium trim rig
– Spring loaded 4mm speaker terminals
– Dual 4 Ohm voice coils with same-site located terminals for series or parallel use
– Voice Coil Diameter: 3 inch (75mm) Kapton Coated
– Flat tinsel leads attached to spider
– Mounting depth 190mm
– Cut-out diameter, 295mm
– Efficiency: 87.8dB 1w/1M
– Electrical Q Value, Qes: 0.49
– Mechanical Q Value, Qms: 4.5
– Total Speaker Q Value, Qts: 0.44
– Free Air Resonance, FMS: 26.9 Hz
– Equivalent Compliance, VAS: 58 Litres
– Linear One Way Excursion, Xmax: 23 mm
– Magnet Force Factor, Bl: 17.7
Review by Adam Rayner
There has been some very intense Forum interest in the Jatt JT-12’s arrival as SNG Audio have seemed to catch the attention of the Talk Audio elite. I was a bit worried that this could be amounting to hype as I have found in the past. Thing is, the expertise out there in TA forum land is of a calibre that ain’t about to bullshat. And thankfully, they were only excited as the description of what this woofer was about and would do turned out to be simple fact.
It’s an effective Streetbasser with big old excursion and a really phat slice of power handling. I gave the PowerBass XA3000D bass amp one last go as reference item I think I have another candidate in the wings now the brand is between distributors in the UK (by the way there are some nutty deals at the FSM Audio EBay shop. This amp will be on it soon!) I hooked the marine 10A charger up to the Odyssey battery to support it the better and left the multimeter running so as to check the voltage wasn’t sagging too badly.
First, I played some of the Spirit of Sound #6 disc from Focal and found the woofer was able to bump along nicely to the material but was no way able to do the tight wibbly nuance and subtlety in the bass that say a Morel Ultimo is so damn good at. So I stopped all that piffle as after all, this is called a Streetbasser woofer and SNG say they are making an SQ effort as well. I got out the disc with the bloke holding his bleeding ears on it, called More Bass, More Boom, More Bottom and went straight to track six Woofer Excursion Test. The script is hysterical and refers to bottoming out woofers and blowing stuff up.
Then it drops.
The test rig coped well, the amp’s fan went ‘whoof’, the voltage held and the headunit drove the tunes to the point where half the house was vibrating. The thing went in and out a very long way and even tracked the mad melody of the sub bass insanity that is the outfit who call themselves Power Supply. ‘BASS BOOM BOTTOM, BASS, BASS BOOM BOOM BOTTOM!’ sang the happy chappy and for the first time I saw the amazingly inert and solid Acoustic Wood enclosure start to migrate gently along the carpet with the pile’s direction, like a furry vibrating cat mousey toy.
The bass was rich, full and satisfying. I gave it a series hook up, so I could drive it all harder, as at a two ohm load, the amp would have been nearly twice the woofer’s rating and the rig would have ducked and failed. In eight ohm with the charger running, I could give it bloody beans and I did. I’m never happiest than when I can smell voice coils in the morning and while the amp didn’t give a hoot nor warm up and headunit purred, with all cables staying firm-jacketed and room-cool, the speaker’s deeply distant voice coil, could still be felt warm as toast through the cone and the aroma of volatiles coming off the new adhesive was delicious. (OK I AM a woofer perve and this is stuff I’d never EVER admit in Home Cinema Choice magazine!)
After a bit of utter test track arrant hooliganism, I flicked it on to some more bass-oriented fun and played some more.
The SNG Audio Jatt Series is Badass and you can quote me! The JT-12 just makes me want to see a JT-15 so bad I can taste it, but if wanted it louder, you could just install more, till you could call elephants. Fact is, at this price a multi-woofer install isn’t unfeasible. Four of these versus certain ï¿½400 woofers is a weight penalty in the car but if you care about the bass more than cornering fast, then these are one bloody awesome building block at ï¿½99.99 apiece.
Ridiculous Value For Money and stupefying power handling for it, as well as purely kid-tastic amounts of bling, as well as that top ring bit, all adds up to a bit of a Billy Bargain for the Bass Head and earns enough to garner a coveted Talk Audio Recommended award.
Sound Quality 8.0
Build Quality 9.0
Power Handling 10.0
Efficiency 7.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 8.8