Also is the box built to spec for the sub. an improper box can make the sub not play correctly and ruin the sub

 

took it back to the store and got a refund. Got a sony woofer instead and noticed it had more to it than the pioneer. Wired it up and instantly noticed that it was hitting harder at the same settings then the pioneer was. Played it for a half hour and all was good. Sounds pretty good for a stock HU.

 

Your amp isn't putting out anywhere near 1000 watts. Max ratings on amps are worthless, the only rating you should pay attention to is rms. On that amp, taking into consideration the low input voltage, stock electrical, impedance load the amp is seeing, box rise and the amp's efficiency, you'd be lucky to see 400rms out of that thing. So if you're running a sub rated at 1200 watts, and giving it at best 400 watts, while cranking it up to see what it can do, that's a recipe for what you got, a blown sub. And we didn't even figure out if the box it was in was even right for that sub yet.

I've been installing systems for 20 years and have never broken in a sub and never blown one so i'm not buying in to the "subs need to be broken in" line of thinking. That doesn't mean a subs suspension won't loosen up after being played for a while, it will, and when it does the sub will likely hit lower and get a little louder. Now if you were running a high powered system and building a burp car for competitions then I'd be a little careful when trying to burp 5k watts on a fresh sub. But for daily drivers, this is a non-issue.

Cool. I bet that sub wasn't rated as high either, maybe even more efficient so it's able to make better use of the power it's getting, but there's so much I don't know that I can't even begin to explain why this is. Could be specs of the subs were alot different, could be different ohm loads to the amp, could be this sub matches up with this box better than the other sub, could be alot of things. But oh well, glad you like it.