Tight controlled bass

Poorly designed amplifier circuitry

As with many other reviewers, mine began the WHOMP+WHOMP+WHOMP scenario at 2am and resulted in severe heart palpitations on my part. I took the sub in (still under manufacturers warranty luckily) to my local Circuit City and was told it would be back in less than two weeks. That was 2 1/2 months ago and it is still not fixed and JBL refuses to replace it as unrepairable. After many complaints to both JBL and Circuit City nothing has been resolved. Although I loved the depth and clarity of the bass response when this sub was working properly, I hesitate to recommend it due to the problems that many more people than I have experienced.

JBL PSW-D110 provides an excellent base response for a 20x18 room. It complements my Klipsch and Infinity speakers very well. Performed reliably for a year and a half until that fateful day, June 10, 2000....

A component on the amp fried and the D110 produced high-volume earthquake-type rumbles that shook the termites from the house. I unplugged the unit, took out the amp and discover a burnt component. It turned out to be C6, a condenser that literally blew its little can right off the innards. Called JBL. Hopeless. E-mailed, no response. I'm 50 miles from service. Estimates: $100 plus to repair. Solution: found the blown body of the condenser in the case: a 10 mf, 50 volt deal. Radio Shack replacement: 99 cents. So far so good. Should not have happened, and if so, you would think JBL would fess up and be accessible given the volume of complaints from other purchasers.

Very good subwoofer with a history of a defective component on the amplifier. I know now that price isn't linked to durability, but I'm trusting a Radio Shack component will be just as reliable as the Radio Shack counterfeit parts that found their way into our national defense missile systems some years ago.

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None

Tight & thunderous

Likes to blow itslef up after warranty period

Thank God other people have seen this sub proceed to blow-up on its own. I thought I was going crazy. Mine went while I was sleeping ... WOMP+WOMP+WOMP at increasing higher volumes until you figure out what is causing it is enough to give someone a heart-attack. The residents in my condo building still think a helipcopter attack squadron landed on the roof. I'm not telling them it was this little JBL sub making all the noise. When I got to it and unplugged it I was horrified to see white-smoke coming from the rear!!! I absolutely loved this sub until this happened. I am really hesitant about fixing it (big $) and having this happen again with worse consequences (like burning down my building). I think it is time to retire my favorite sub and suggest other people think twice before purchasing one.

Can be filled with sand and used as a boat anchor.

Boomy, cheeeaaap materials, an amp that self destructed after a few months.

I wanted a sub for use in a small room, for use with a computer based system. The PSW-D110 looked like a no-brainer - cheap, manufactured/marketed by a well known company, cheap. The back panel has a phase control, high and low pass inputs, high and low pass crossover controls. Looked good. Unfortunately I ignored one of the few rules I've found to be almost always true - you get what the hell you pay for in life. Due to the size of the room I never had the volume at more than about the lower 1/3, used a surge protector and kept it out of harms way. I never got close to the tight, controlled sound I wanted. The sub always sounded boomy and unnatural. Finally the amp blew - R.I.P. Paradigm, here I come.

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Cambridge SoundWorks Powered Sub, Paradigm Servo 15.

Good strong clear bass

It quit working.

Had this for about 1 year and 2 months when it started doing the same thing as reported by the first review up there. Started making this horrendous booming noise at 4 in the morning, scaring the hell out of everyone in the house. Took it to circuit city and they said it would be about $150 to fix it, more than half what I paid for it.

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KLH costco $99 cheapo

Sounds great for what it is with movies like Matrix and Saving Private Ryan.

no on-off switch. (gee, sound familiar?)

I tell you, if I had of thought about this website before I bought this unit, I never would have bought it. I too have had the infamous 'blow-up' with a high-pitched buzzing. Given the proximity to the warranty expiration date, JBL did fix it under warranty. I also had the fuse blow out too. I can't believe that with the amount of people that this has happened to that JBL won't admit any fault. As far as I'm concerned, I should be reimbursed my entire purchase amount so I can buy another sub thats not pre-programmed to blow just after the warranty expiration date. JBL, if you're reading this, you lost my business.

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N/A

A great addition to my system, given the weakness of the low end on my mains.

This is the second one of these things that have blown up on me. Will NOT but another

The scum bucket blew up on me!!!! Come on JBL fix these things!!!!

Bought blown sub on eBay and fixed with 99 cent capacitor. The thump, thump, thump you all hear after 16 months is a 10 microferad, 50 volt capacitor melting down. It is labeled on the motherboard as C6. The Radio Shack capacitor is non-polarized, so do not worry about installing it backward. If you know even basic soldering, you can save yourself $150 by installing this $1 piece yourself. JBL should be ashamed! All these subs going bad due to a part that cost them 10 cents! All I had on C6 was two leads--the capacitor was completely blown away!

Thanks all for posting this fix. It works and is the source of all the probems descrbed here. Don't throw it out, fix it!

powerful in movies, some music

front level control,too boomy

the pswd110 is a really good sub until it blows on you.mine started making a loud rumble sound the pop.all this happened today even with my ht turned off!!!!!!!!anyways i started saving for a new sub maybe polk audio or velodyne.i dont recommend this sub to nobody anyway they dont sell this model anymore.so jbl didnt do a good job with this model.aftewr all this happened i called jbl directly at california and they said to ship it to them or to take it to a jbl repair center i said no way iam shipping this pos to cali iam junking it ,even i couldnt find out whats wrong with sub i opened it to see cause used to work for a computer repair center about a year ago,but nothing just heat from the back ,this sub got warm even without any sound at all!dont buy it,buy polk,velo,m-k,all those better type brands .

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none first one

The strenghts of this sub are the ease of hook up, ease of controlling and ease of use. You just plug it in, set the controls as far as tuning your high and low pass filters and away you go. I sometimes adjust the volume on the front for different listening modes (movies, music, etc)

As before, this POS fried bed after a period of great performance (almost 20 months). I was convinced that lightning took it out, but after reading the below post, I've found that C6 was burned out as described. I'll make a trip to Radio Shack to determine if they have that cap in stock to fix it before I have a friend over for a movie tomorrow night.

Besides the PSW-D110 failing, a woofer on my HLS-610 set blew after a party. I'm now turned off on JBL and will NEVER purchase another product from them again. They are $hitting all over the name of John B. Lansing. I went ahead and bout Bose 601 cherry wood finish from Best Buy over the web - good transaction.

Even though I had a bad experince, 2 stars on each rating was because I had great performance from the subwoofer while it was in operation. If you have technical ability or the interest, I would build a subwoofer from scratch with the information provided from many places on the Internet. A good place to start is: http://www.diysubwoofers.org/ There are so many different variables that you can set yourself to make a good subwoofer that exhibits the perfect characteristics for your home audio set up. Email me if you are interested in my project details.

thanks!

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Currently making two 12" subs from spare C12a kickers I had lying around. I'll send the two subwoofer outs to a separate amp, then the speaker output to the actual subs I'll make from scratch. I'll post a follow up post to this after I've completed the replacement of the C6 cap.