my subwoofer is picking up noise?

holy ****! the resistance through my ground to the battery was 4 ohm. i added a 4 gauge wire from my battery negative and bolted it directly to the chassis and preped the area before attaching it. now the resistance is around .2-.4 ohms. this should help, but unfortunatly i broke one of the tips off of my current rca cables so i will have to go buy new ones to see if this helped with the noise. i will let everyone know if it helped later today.

Yes, that should help.  With that high a return resistance you definitely had a ground loop happening.  Check the return resistance in your head unit as well.Support the12volt.com

Well thank you for the compliment. Really. As voltage drops current will increase as you pointed out. My point is that the performance of the amplifier suffers as a result. Am I right? Will all types of amps perform the same at 11 or 9 volts as they will at 14.4 or 12volts? Maybe its just semantics, but if there is any change in the amplifiers performance due directly to voltage and or current drop then that amp is starved for power. If an amp can not be starved for power then we are all wasting money on large gauge power wire, right. Amps with poor ground connections are prone to noise. I base this on 15 years of experience and a theory that I have. Of coarse I could be wrong. The theory that I have is that signal voltage is a direct result of difference in potential between the source and the amp. In the event that the amp or the source has an increased resistance to ground the potential for signal voltage will drop. This will also become worse as current (and therefore resistance) increases. This is exactly the reason that you suggested regrounding the head unit. The voltage drop that is a result of a poor ground to the head unit will cause a decreased signal voltage. This causes the RMS value of the musical content traveling across the RCAs to be too close to the noise floor, resulting in audible noise. On top of all of that an amp that is receiving insufficient voltage will clip with even a moderate input signal, adding to the noises. Ever see an amp that pulses the subs in and out at about one cycle per second because of a bad ground? In an effort to respond to your last post I found myself digging out my MECP advanced study guide (2004 I think) and came across page 24 (Power supply and distribution). If you have this guide sitting around please look this up. I think that by reading this page you will see exactly how I relate Kirchhoff’s laws of voltage and current to this topic. Not that I am absolutely right, but you will see my logic. Like I said I could be wrong. And I have never taught circuit theory (beyond the bay). If I am wrong, I would be very interested in getting my hands on the documentation that can set me on the correct path.

well that did improve the sound quality of the subs, but there is still a lot of noise. i guess ill go with regrounding the head unit next. if this doesnt work ill have my friends uncle, who has built and repaired amps for kicker for 10 or more years to take a look at the amp and make sure its working properly.

Unfortunately for you, Kicker (just like Pioneer does on their headunits) puts a fuse in the shield path of the RCA shields. If your ground wire comes loose while the amp is playing, it will cause the fuse to blow. You need to use your ohm meter and check the resistance from the RCA shields to one of the middle speaker connections. This should be 0 ohms. I am betting it is a lot higher than that.

well, my factory ground for the head unit is .2-.3 ohms so i should not have to reground that, unless it would help to reground it anyways?

i am an idiot wrote: Unfortunately for you, Kicker (just like Pioneer does on their headunits) puts a fuse in the shield path of the RCA shields. If your ground wire comes loose while the amp is playing, it will cause the fuse to blow. You need to use your ohm meter and check the resistance from the RCA shields to one of the middle speaker connections. This should be 0 ohms. I am betting it is a lot higher than that.

well i checked that what you explained to me, but it did not give me a reading at all. i wonder if perhaps the connection inside the amp for the rca inputs it bad. if the connection is loose i would assume that would be the reason for all of the random noise, and it would explain the why when i tap or touch the amp the subs make noise.

can you tell me what are the info for the fuse. volts? amps? or would it be perfectly ok to replace it with a resistor?

It will be perfectly OK to replace it with the resistor.