A couple days ago I had the pleasure of installing the Alpine Pwe-s8 into a Jeep Wrangler.
The sound quality actually blew me away, this guy unlike the Kicker hideaway is a quad coil subwoofer and you quickly find that out when look at the power and signal harness that alpine provided for it.
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Needless to say the number of coils for this particular system is irrelevant but it shows the effort alpine put into this sub.
Before I installed it I had doubts about the acoustics and sound quality, mostly because these types of amplified subwoofer enclosures are not recommended in an open cabin such as a jeep wrangler cabin, they are more for the closed cabin of a standard pickup. Well, at-least that’s what I thought. Boy was I wrong!
ALPINE PWE-S8 SPECIFICATIONS
| Width | 13.5 inches |
| Height | 9 inches |
| Depth | 3 inches |
| Rms Power (continuous power) | CEA 2006 rating of 120 watts RMS |
| Peak Power | 240 watts |
What will you need for the installation of the alpine pwe-s8?
We found the Proper wiring kit in order to extend the kicker supplied wiring. This kit has been our go-to kit because of the short length of the power cable that comes with this unit.
HOW TO INSTALL THE ALPINE PWE-S8
There are a set of RCA connections for low level input from the sub outputs from behind an aftermarket radio as well as a set of left and right speaker wires connected to the Alpine pwe-s8 main harness, this means that it has a switchable hi/low converter for optimum versatility.
How to Wire The Alpine Pwe-s8
There are also “gain” and “bass boost” knobs available for tuning and a variable hi/low input button.
Find Your Audio System's Ideal Wire Gauge
The hi/lo button does two very convenient things, it allows you to tell the amplifier which way you chose to input a signal and it also allows for a signal sensing low level amp turn on or a hi level turn on via the dedicated “remote turn on wire”.
What this means for you is that if you chose to use RCA wires as a signal input for this amp you could switch the button to the low level setting and PWE-S8 will sense the signal that the radio provides into the RCA cables and turn the amp on.
If you are using a factory stereo with this amp you can tap into the speaker leads behind the radio to provide signal then you would need to run the remote wire provided on the alpines main harness to ignition or a factory amp turn-on wire on the vehicle.
Alpine PWE-s8 Installation tips and tricks:
Aside from the main harness, Alpine provides a gain knob to control the bass output of the subwoofer with about 25ft of cable and some Velcro in order to mount it without drilling holes into your vehicle. They also provide 4 wide angle mounting extensions and all the screws you would need to mount this system.
Alpine Pwe-S8 Installation Issues:
The only issues i ran into during this installation was the lack of wire length on the main harness. They literally give you around 2 feet of speaker wire and power wire.
The customer had to purchase a 10 Gauge amp wiring kit and I had to solder the amp kits power wire to the alpines main harness.
The kit I used matched up perfectly and the fuse rating was workable as well.
I used all of the screws they provided, but I used self tappers to pre-drill before i mounted the alpine to the frame of the vehicle. This is the amp kit that I used and it worked perfectly.
If you have any questions regarding amplifier installations or the wiring of your subwoofers to your amplifier you can read our in depth guide on How To Install An Amplifier.
