Setting my gain

shaman, the DC resistance of the voice coil is N/A to power computations, since musical energy is AC.  You have to use the nominal impedence of the driver.  If it's 6 ohms in your case, then that's what you plug into the formula. Support the12volt.com

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There have been many people who have said that the gain controls were not volume controls and they are right, to a point. Some amplifiers' gain controls are used precisely like a volume control (one end of the potentiometer connected to ground, the other end connected to the pre-amp signal and the wiper connected to the amplifier's front end). This configuration will allow you to reduce the output to nothing at the minimum gain position. These are not very common but they HAVE been used on some amplifiers. I know because I took the cover off of a few amps to see why they had absolutely no output (Doh!). Others are connected similarly but there is a small amount of resistance between ground and the formerly grounded terminal of the potentiometer. This small resistance prevents the gain control from reducing the output to zero output. These are very common on amplifiers made in Korea and China. There are other amps that use the potentiometer to pull the signal toward ground. The pot is the lower half of a voltage divider and may use only 2 legs of the potentiometer. This type of gain control was used on at least one brand of Japanese manufactured amplifier. You can also put the potentiometer in the feedback loop to control the overall gain of the amplifier. The point to all of this is... There are many ways to use a potentiometer to control the output of the amplifier. Some are used precisely as volume controls and others are not. You can not make a blanket statement such as 'gain controls are not volume controls'.

OK, how about this for a blanket statement: input sensitivity controls are not volume controls.  And here's blanket statement number two: some sh*tty quality amplifiers are built so poorly that their gain controls do not function properly as input sensitivity controls.  And now my blanket stement number three: installers or users who think it is OK to use gain controls as volume controls are setting themselves up for clipping their amplifiers.  That better? Support the12volt.com

DYohn wrote: OK, how about this for a blanket statement: input sensitivity controls are not volume controls.  And here's blanket statement number two: some sh*tty quality amplifiers are built so poorly that their gain controls do not function properly as input sensitivity controls.  And now my blanket stement number three: installers or users who think it is OK to use gain controls as volume controls are setting themselves up for clipping their amplifiers.  That better?

Amen, brother!

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