SYPHON556

Okay, so I have two 12" Rockford Fosgate 400watt \ subs in the trunk of my camaro powered by a 2-channel 450 watt pioneer amp.

Well it plays fairly well but I've noticed if I try to take the music a bit high, the subs just cut out, like they're not there. To bring them back I have to bring the volume back down a bit and they'll start working again.

I didn't install the amp myself, so I'm not sure if it's a mistake in the wiring. Is my amp too low powered for the subs? Is there a setting I need to set on my amp? Is my CD player too low powered (I think it's 100watt)? Is this normal?

Please help!

Thanks!

LowStyleII

Actually what might be happening is that your amp is going into thermal protection. You have to let the amp cool down before attempting to turn it back on. Thats why you can't turn your volume up that loud and or your amp is putting out too much power and you need to turn it down a bit. Did you set up your amp and volume control after you put it in? The input level control matches the output of your radio to the input of the amp. Make sure your input level on the amp in turned down all the way. Play a CD and make sure the bass and treble settings are flat. Turn the volume up slowly until you hear distortion. Now back the volume down just a bit. On the amp slowly turn up the input level control until you start to hear distortion. Then back it off a bit. Now your radio and amplifire are matched. Hope that helps Long huh

HamSpiced

thats nice... tech article nice (wink wink)

mudaholic

could also be that your wiring is too small. your power/ground wires to the amp i mean.

SYPHON556

Ok, I'll try that, although it's not becuase of overheating, I know that for sure. It's below-freezing weather over here and this happens all the time, I don't know how temperature really affects amps but maybe it's becuase it's too cold?

I'll try changing the setting like you said though, might help.

Thanks!

LowStyleII

Thank you wink wink

efbaudy

too small of guage wiring + crappy amp that struggles = system failure .... the cold shouldnt matter too much cause the average 2 channel amp looses about 40% of its juice due to the heat...thats why u dont need that many watts on a mono block amp to slam harder then a high watt amp Example: 300watt mono vs. 700 watt 2 channel amp = mono destroying the 2 channel

EjBaL

I have been having the same exact problem. I have a rockford fosgate 360a2 and 1 12" JL wo. I thought my remote wire was loose so I tightened that up and it still sometimes cuts out, mostly only when its turned up. Also I have 4ga wiring that splits into 8ga at a distribution block. The biggest wire the amp will take is 8ga so I know thats fine. Yes the ground is also 8ga, and its only about 12 inches long bolted right to the car in the bottom of the trunk. What could be causing this? If the frequencies on the amp were set wrong would it just cut out certain frequencies like that? Please help me. Thanks. Also what should I have the frequencies set at? I have low mid and high frequencies on my JVC KD SH77 and also have them on the amp, what would be the best frequencies for my sub? Also the amp is only turned up about 1/4 of the way, I already popped 1 WO with it and dont want to do it again. I listen to rap, country, metallica, godsmack, basically a huge variety. Thanks again.

jawzforlife1

I also have two 12" rockford XLC's and a rockford 500 amp. And have never had this problem, I wonder what makes my set up differnant than you guys?? I have you tried differnat amps to see if it does the same thing??

Little Red RS

i've had the same problem but not with the same setup.. yeah i know it's bad.. i had a jensen 10 in a bandpass box.. and i had it hooked up wrong.. didn't have rca cables so i went thru the high input.. after i got a really good set of rca cables the problem went away.. i had a friend with an explorer with 4 12's in it.. and he was having the same problem.. the amp would put on the red light and would cut the subs out.. so we rewired the amp from battery back.... replaced the wires and everything to the sub.. about 70$ in wires.. then we rewired subs.. there's really good article at www.crutchfield.com about wireing parrell and series.. if you were running multiple subs.. also i don't know that much about dual voice coil subs.. but perhaps there's a different way to run the wires to the speakers.. i've seem some dvc subs that have wires going to each set of posts on the speaker.. so they have 4 wires instead of 2.. but like i said i don't know all that much about dvc.. do you have i bridged???

DISTURBthePEACE

Definately check the wiring first. Size does matter. I have a friend who was trying to run a Jensen amp (like 600 watts I think) and he was running power and ground off speaker wire! I almost smacked him! I told him he needed to upgrade to at least 8 ga. or else he would have a meltdown. He went to 4 ga. and has no pro...well, had no problems, his sh*t got jacked a couple days later.... But the wiring is nice!

Huckster's '84 TA

the ohm load might be to low for the amp to handle as well. most 2 channel amps cant have below a 4ohm bridged mono load. i had a 2 channel autotek (actually very impressed with) that i sold to a friend. i ran it in 2 ohm bridged, but never had a problem ( i never listen to stuff that loud), yet he wired it up the same way but pushed it very hard and it blew on him. i would say check the ohm load and power wire size

NEEDAZ

A lot of people don’t realize that to small a gauge amp wire CAN kill the amp. Make shore you have the thick enough gauge power wire to your amp or you could blow the amp.

Eric86TA

It would help to know what model amp you have. That way we could look at the amp's specs and see if there is a problem. It could be that you amp has a low current cut off where it tries to protect itself from insufficient current supplies. Also, it could be the temperature. Just because it is cold outside doesn't mean that the internal parts of the amp are. It could be something as small as a transistor that is overheating. That would only take a matter of seconds.

Eric86TA

Filters on amps are there to just eliminate certain frequencies. In order to know what frequency your sub amp should be set at you need to know the characteristics of you sub in the box that it is in. Most sub come with literature that details this. If not you can usually find it on the web. The literature should tell you and/or show you a graph of the bass response in the recommended size box. The specs should give you a 3dB frequency. This is known as the cutoff or half power frequency. At that frequency, you sub is no longer performing to its best ability. There is actually a high and a low 3db point. You will want to set your amp to not play above or below that frequency. I'm not sure about your amp but a lot of amps now have "sub sonic filter"s on them. That is what they are for. To filter out the low frequencies. If you amp only has a low pass filter then you want to set it somewhere below the cutoff frequency of you sub. How low is up to you depending on your preferences. Sorry to be so long winded but I hope this helps.