ALot of people say the shape wont let them move, and the tinsel lead brake. But I have had mines for 3 years no problems, but my boys messed his tinsle leads up. I think if you find the right mono amp because my boys amp was stereo, you should be ok. PLus alot of people dont understand fine tuning of crossover and gains. fom my opinion there good.
i think L7s blow a lot because they are mosly used for SPL competition and people trying to get really loud. if you don't abuse them, they are as reliable as any other sub. i've had mine for about a year with no problems.
i'm not sure about the square cone being "harder to exend", but the square shape does let the L7 push 20% more air than a round sub of the same size, and that's a good thing.
almost forgot, i read an article where the kicker team hooked up four 1200 watt rms mono blocks, one to each coil of a pair of 8" L7s for an SPL test. if two 8"s can take a total of 4800 watts continuous without blowing, i say they are pretty sturdy subs.
as hard as i've listened for those uneven stress points, i can't hear them. i've been waiting a long time for these stress points to reveal themselves in some way - no luck so far.
It's usually a flaw at extremely high excursions and it increases distortion, something you don't notice as much with low frequencies.
"i read an article where the kicker team hooked up four 1200 watt rms mono blocks, one to each coil of a pair of 8" L7s for an SPL test. if two 8"s can take a total of 4800 watts continuous without blowing, i say they are pretty sturdy subs."
That's not really uncommon for SPL tests. When you run a ported or bandpass box near tuning, the mechanical power handling of the sub is much, much more than if that sub were in a sealed box. If you were to run that sub with that much power for a long period of time, it would fry the voice coil, and if you applied it at anything other than a port's tuned frequency, the sub would have mechanical failure eventually.