I was recently given a 15" JBL P-1500 Series automotive woofer that I want to "convert" for a non-automotive application. I'm not sure what's all involved in this and was wondering if anyone has done this or has advice on what to do. It's 5 ohm impedance, whereas I believe most home speakers are 8 ohms. Would putting a 3 ohm resistor in series with the speaker hookup give me the correct impedance? Also, it's rated at 400 watt peak power. Are there any amps that can be added to a household stereo system to power the woofer?

Thanks

Careful, impedance != resistance. It's the effective resistance resulting from capacitive and inductive reactance + pure DC resistance, and it varies with frequency. The 8 ohm rating is typically 8 ohms @ 1KHz and that's pretty far away from what a sub-woofer would see. What's the impedance in its frequency range? ? But don't worry, most modern amps can comfortably drive 4 - 8 ohms, some as low as 2 -check your amp's specs. However, if you are combining it with other speakers, the resulting combined impedance will be less than the speaker with the lowest impedance and your amp may not like that, and the sound balance will be off. As far as power, it's generally better to overpower than underpower a speaker. An overpowered speaker sounds bad and you end up turning down the gain before something nasty happens. An underpowered speaker may or may not sound bad before an overdriven amplifier starts clipping and the transients kill your speaker.