need help with amp

[c_olive18]

i burned out an alpine am yesterday, fan stopped working and overheated till it poped. tried to hook up a kenwood amp today and it has powesand its not in protection mode, but there is not any power coming out of the connections to power my subs. What could cause this???

[birdhouse]

Are you 100% positive you didn't blow the voice coils on the subs, too?

[RisingX2004]

Try another sub on the amp if you have access to one. Might be the coils on your subs. Let us know if you test that and then we can go from there

[c_olive18]

i dont have access to another sub. only one of my friends has a system, and he wont let me try it out cuz hes too worried ill blow it. When i push on both subs they wont move. only a little bit and then they come back out slowly. i tested the terminals with a volatge meter, and could find any reading on any of its settings... but im not sure if its not hooked up to a sub if any power would come out. one of my subs is still under warranty for about 2 weeks. they are both only single coice coils. Another question is for two 800 watt 10" subs what size amp should i really be using.. my alpine was 757 watt 2 channel that i bridged. when it blew i heard a pop and there was litteraly a flame coming out of where the fan is. I was lucky i keep the armrest down in my grand prix or i would have lost my whole car. Any help is appreciated and i give you all a big thanks.

[GreenGA98]

Hell, if the sub is still under warenty, take it back and get a new one. A new amp/sub combo might be the way to go now. If there was a fire in your amp, check the wires going into it, and replace them if they are bad.

For the amp, you want to worry about the RMS, try to get it close to or under what the subs are at RMS. That way u know u r not overpowering the subs and pushing them too hard.

Plus, this "fire" could have been caused by an improper setup, make sure your amp is grounded, and u have an inline fuse on the power wire to the amp.

If u decide to get a new system, which u might have to, unless u know how to fix subs and amps, then I would recommend anything Alpine or Kicker.

Im posting while tired, so if anybody has any suggestions or corrections to what im saying, let me kno, no screaming, lol:lol:

Good Luck, be cool about fire safety;)

[RisingX2004]

^ If you are using an amp with its RMS power at or below the subs RMS and crank the gain on the amp, you will have clipping and that will blow a sub way faster than overpowering it. The gain on the amp shouldnt be cranked anyways, makes it work way too hard and a lot of the time sounds like crap. I always reccomend an amp with power ratings above the subs RMS and set the gains on the amp correctly. Plenty of clean power with plenty of headroom for music peaks. Just a little info for ya.

As for your subs, abnormally stiff suspensions are not good unless you have top of the ine stuff. If it is still under warranty, take it back. By the way, what kind of subs are they?

[GreenGA98]

^Yea that works too, i am just being safe, the gain shouldn't be up too high on your amp, cause that will cause clipping....yada yada yada.......and your subs won't work

But that was already explained by RisingX2004

c_olive18, let us know what u do:D

[Bjornboy81]

Originally posted by c_olive18
i tested the terminals with a volatge meter, and could find any reading on any of its settings... but im not sure if its not hooked up to a sub if any power would come out. This scares me. It sounds like you have no idea how to use a voltmeter. Set it volts (not amps, or ohms, or anything else) and touch the leads on the amps output terminals...doesn't matter postive or negitive it's all AC voltge. Put on a song that has constant long bass notes...not single bass notes...most voltmeters are too slow to pick up a decent signal on single bass notes like a kick drum. If you get anything other than zero's, then the amp is putting out voltage. You don't need anything hooked up for it to put out a voltage....power yes, but you're not measuring power, you're measuring voltage.


Originally posted by c_olive18
When i push on both subs they wont move. only a little bit and then they come back out slowly. I assume you have a sealed box. Because it's sealed, how much do you really expect the sub cone to move??? Not much. When you push on it you're trying to compress the air inside the box, which unless you press hard, it's not easy to do. BUT, because no box is totally air tight, when you press on it, some air will come out (through small gaps usually around the therminals) so when you let go, the cone slowly moving out is the air being pulled back in by the cone. This isn't a good way to determine if the subs are bad.

A better way: Take your meter and set it to "ohms". Touch the leads to the terminals of the sub box...make sure it's not connected to the amp. It should read about 3.5 ohms on a 4 ohm voice coil. If it's higher, substantially lower, or says "OL" or something like that, then the coil is bad.

I'm guessing you did something to the wiring when the first amp went...check the power cable fuse, and make sure you're getting a signal to the amp...you could have fried your outputs on your radio...theres a lot that could be wrong...track it down one at a time.

Good luck :)

[c_olive18]

my subs are 10" kenwoods 800 watt from best buy. one is blown completely and the other is still good. my first amp went because the fan stopped working and overheated and never blew my fuse by the battery or on the amp for some reason. the "new" amp that i have was my old one before i bought the alpine and would only work for about 5 minutes before it would just should off and the fan would keep running. protection light never came on. for the voltmeter i wasnt getting a reading on voltage first so i figured it might just measure on another setting. im gonna buy a new amp next week ( get paid every other week ) and replace all of my wiring. Im not sure what the rms rating of my subs are tho. on the box it says peak - 800 watts, maximum - 350 watts, and rated - 175 watts. im assuming that the rms would be 175 but im not sure. if im running 2 of theses subs @ 175 rms would i get a 350 rms amp??? i dont want to run it bridged. thanks for all of your help so far!