I know this sub inside and out - literally

Author's Rating:

Pros: - 150 watts of room-shaking power - quality constructed cabinet

Cons: - Some ugly soldering on the inside - A bit boomy for a small room

The Bottom Line: 
I would reccomend this sub due to it's great sound and quality construction

Author's Review
I bought two of these subs back in 2004 for my home theater on the LFE channel. One sub just didn't cut it for the big living room. In fact, I was so impressed with how well one performed, that I bought the other. Then I was really blown away.

I'll list some things I found to be nice about this sub:

- One great thing about this sub is that you can loop one off the other if your receiver doesn't have 2 sub RCA pre-outputs. You have the option of mono RCA input or wired input.
- Power saver feature is nice. After a few minutes of no bass signal, a relay clicks, the power light goes red and it enters 'sleep mode', helping you pay less to the power company.
- Adjustable x-over and level controls are nice. There is also a 180 degree phase switch for sub-placement tuning. I ran this sub through a bass test cd and it performed best around 40Hz although I could hear it just above 20Hz.
- 150 watts of power is great for this sub. It seems like it can handle it perfectly. The speaker itself, although paper cone, has a thick rubber surround and seems very sturdy. One thing's for sure - it does not have a problem rattling anything that's loose in my house when driven!
- Finally, the sub cabinet is quality laminated wood. I had my two SA-WM500s for a number of years now and there are no chips in the laminate. The plastic housing in the rear has about 20 screws in it so it's not going to shake loose by any means. The bass port is an oval 2-piece design that works well.

Now I'll get on to why I know this sub so well on the inside...

After driving these subs so hard playing music and watching movies, a power amp in one of them blew. I do not blame the components in the sub for it at all. I really drive my electronics hard and this is what happened. So after finding the Sony service manual on this, I decided to replace the amp IC. Whala - works perfectly now. I must say that despite some ugly soldering here and there, the electronics are quite nice in the sub. The IC I needed to replace was easy to find online and a simple de-solder, re-solder job was all it needed.

Overall, I would reccomend this sub to anyone with a medium sized room and especially on the LFE channel of a nice receiver. I wouldn't pay more than $120 for a nicely used one though.