this has been a 5 day process so far trying to get my new sub in the car. when i bought it i put it in, it worked fine, but pushed the amp too far, and it threw the thermal light. asked people about it, they said to do some things and it would go away. so i did those things, the light did not go away, and the next time i turned on my car, the amp did not even turn on, and the fuses were fine.

so i went out today and bought a new amp that could handle the power of the sub. i put the amp in, connected it as showed in the manual, AND THE FREAKING SUB STILL DOES NOT WORK. the amp has a light on it, and everything is connected but the sub does not work

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS. someone give me some insight PLEASE. i just want this to get hooked up.

And i highly doubt that the sub is blown, it is rated at 500watt rms, and my old amp only put out 125watts into it which is why it blew. the new amp puts out 300 watts, so i just don't see how the sub could be blown.

 

If ther thermal light came on, you should have turned the gain down (or learned how to properly set the gain).

You should be able to push down on the subwoofer cone and have it come back up. If it won't do eithor, the subwoofer is blown.

We need more information from you to figure out what went wrong. Brand of subwoofers, voice coil impedence, ohms it was wired to, brand of old amp, brand of new amp, are you using a LOC (line output converter), where are you tapping for your remote wire, etc. ??

 

Alright so heres the deal:

JL audio 13tw5 4ohms
alpine mrp500 amp

I just got back from the master installers at best buy, and they did not figure it out. He tried a new headunit, 3 different amps, 2 different sets of wires, his own sub, and multi-metered all of my wires. BUT STILL NOTHING WORKED. My ground is good, my remote wire is good. the power wire was only shooting 8v into the amp, so he put a 4awg wire into it so it was receiving 12volts. that did nothing, so he switched amplifiers to a kenwood, and another alpine mrp500. the subwoofer is not blown because if i push on the cone it does come back. he even tried his own sub and got nothing from that.

So what does everyone think? HELP ME

 

how high up did you have the gain on the small amp? distortion will blow a sub before anything else...regardless of the power handling of the sub. So..if you had that amp CRANKED to where it was distorting (over pushing the amp)..then it's very likely you blew the sub. Get a DMM (digital multi-meter) and connect one lead to each of the terminals on the sub and set the DMM to impedance (resistance) and it should read 2 or 4 ohms (whichever it is). If it's more than +/- 1 or 2 ohms then it's most likely blown. ALSO..check all connections make sure your ground is good..make sure the power wire is connected well and there's not a blown/partially blown fuse. Other than that IDK what to tell ya. Oh..check your RCA's..make sure one of the ends didn't break when removing the old amp. Good luck man!

 

Well its not the RCAs and the subwoofer is definately not blown. Like that sub can easily handle 500watts at 4ohms, and the old amp only put out 300watts max at 2 ohms... it was only 125 watts at 4 ohms.

 

BUMP

need advice on how to fix this

 

Are you sure the amp is getting 12 volts from both the remote turn on and power wire. Protection mode could also mean its not getting enough power. Probe your power wire before and after the fuse and see if there is a difference in voltage. If there is then thats your problem. Also bass boost should be off, LPF on and gain adjusted accordingly. Those amps are only good for two ohms, make sure your not trying to put one ohm to it.

 

Well it read 12v on either side of the fuse on the power wire. but towards the amp it was only getting 8v which was wierd. so he put a new power wire on but that did not change anything.

And the amp says that it will run 300watts x 1 into 4 ohms, which is what i am looking for. bass boost was off. LPF was on and the gain did not do anything

 

how do you know the sub isn't blown?....did you test it? I am an installer and I have seen 1000w subs get blown by 200w amps SEVERAL times. Like I said...it doesn't matter how much the sub can handle so much as how much distortion you were putting through it and by the sounds of things you probably had that little baby amp cranked up 100% which probably made a lot of distortion and could potentially have blown the sub.

I'm not saying you did but you cannot assume since it's a 500w sub and the amp was putting out 125 that it COULD NOT have blown it because that is completely wrong.

 

^ x2 to that....

underpowering a sub will blow it faster than overpowering it.

btw, if you're getting 12 volts at the fuse but only 8v at the amp then you've got something wrong with your power circuit, probably a bad ground. now you may say that you've got a "perfectly good ground"... i'd put $100 on it that you've got it bolted to a seat belt bolt eh?

meter the amp wires at the amp, meter it with key off, key on, during crank, deck on, deck off.... all of that. meter your rca's, meter the impedence on your woofer, take the woofer outta the enclosure and meter it.

if you don't know how to use a multimeter, myself (or i'm sure many others on here) would be happy to help

my guess is a re-ground on your amp wire will fix your problem.... grab a wire brush and go to town on the chasis, then bolt directly to bare metal... with a 4v drop from the fuse to the amp there is absolutely nothing that upgrading from 8ga to 4ga wire will do.

keep us posted man!

 

alright well i will go back to best buy today and mention a couple of these things to them. i told him to replace the ground but he said no because he metered it and it was fine.

And the only reason why i dont think my sub is blown is because he even hooked up his own sub from his shop that he was using earlier in the day and that did not get any response. im not trying to be stubborn about this.

But i will make a list of things to check and i will keep you guys posted.

 

1st problem is that you're letting best buy do the work.

 

haha bad idea? i was stuck and i needed someone smarter than me with electronics, and our local car audio installer Dashworks is closed on the weekend

 

so for the ground wire, how would this work:

I can put it on the bolt from the rear tail, with a nut, and i will file down to bare metal and tighten it.

What i don't understand is that i had that ground hooked up to the bolt that i mentioned before from the old bazooka box and it was able to power 2 rockford fosgates and another ED setup...

 

start with by turning gain down and refix your ground....

 

ALRIGHT ITS WORKING.. it was the grounding connection.. best buy is useless..

anyways i have no clue how to tune it.. i have followed the directions in the manual and from what i have heard, but i dont have a clue what the distortion of a subwoofer sounds like. i turned it up pretty far, and is it like a hard pound or something when it distorts? when i turn it down to the point where it doesn't make that pound sound , it sounds like i only have the stock bazooka in my trunk.. im obviously not doing something right.. and my radio does not have a cd player for some reason so i cant go get one of the dynamic cds..

any recommendations?

 

actually best buy is the only major retailer that requires their techs to be mecp certified.... and the only car audio shop that will slap a nationwide lifetime garantee on labor.

if you can get a tech that's been there a bit and not a trainee, you'll be just fine...

so you've got your ground fixed i see? great. now your owner's manual isn't gonna tell you what to set it too cuz every vehicle setup is different (hence the ability to adjust)

you're gonna want the lfp (low pass filter) somewhere between 80 and 100 (this will allow lower frequencies to pass and block out the higher frequencies like voices)

the input sensitivity needs to be adjusted to the voltage output of the rca's from the headunit you're using. example: higher end decks that have 4v or 5v preouts, set your input sensitivity to 4v or 5v. the more you turn it up the more "sensitive" it becomes to the audio being sent to it. not necessarily a super bad thing, but if you're crankin it up all the way with a deck that only has 2v preouts, then you're gonna get distortion.

then the gain is the last adjustment to make. turn your deck up to 3/4 volume and start turning up your gain until you hear it clipping, then back it off a hair.

hope that'll help ya bro




















you owe me $100

 

haha alright thanks alot for helping me. i would give ya 100 dollas if i could but i just spent all my money on the setup haha.

550 dollar sub
250 dollar box
40 dollar best buy troubleshoot and tune
20 dollars on other necessary things

however i did get the sub and box for 500 out the door which was nice. but still.. so much money and way too much time lol

 

LOl

wut..

 

I think I remember someone saying to check that





comments like this crack me up......first of all... I am an Advanced MECP Certified installer at BEST BUY...and one cannot make a general assumption about ALL best buys cuz of a bad experience at one best buy. It's a huge corporation with LOTS of stores so there's definitely going to be a few out there that have idiots working in the install bay. But there are also awesome bays (like mine) who do local Police Department vehicles (everything from lights, sirens, radios, they bring us the new impalas straight from the dealer and we make it a squad car) we also do custom box building, custom dash kits (fiberglass). So before you go off saying that it's a problem letting Best Buy work on a vehicle...think again. In my town, the Circuit City is full of morons who don't no CRAP but I know there's other Circuit Cities out there who do awesome work. Anyway, I'm done ranting about ignorant comments. Glad you got your problem solved!