power wire sizes

i have searched but i could not find my answer.  i have looked at the power and ground wire chart and i am confused on somethings.   I have a fogstae 500a2 and a fosgate 600a4, inline fused with 50a each.  I should use a 100a fuse at the battery correct (50a+50a)? 

from the chart, the 8 gauge is the smallest i can use for 100a.  i currently have 4 gauge running to my 500a2.  i want to add a distribution block in my trunk to add the 600a4 in.  should i keep my 4 guage, add the block and split to 2-4 gauges to the amps?  or should i redo my wire to 2 gauge to the block then 2-4gauges to amps? 

should i upgrade the oem speaker wires to 16 gauge.  they will have 75 rms going through them to a set of components. thanks!

forbidden wrote:

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Take two identical home audio speakers with 8" or 10" drivers and hook them up to the speaker A and B ouputs of a good quality amp (we used Harman Kardon). One set of speakers was wired with 16 gauge and the other was wired in 12 gauge. Guess how many people bought the speaker that sounded better because it had better bass response.  Imagine the customers surprise when we told them the speakers were the same model and the same price and the difference was a good speaker wire.

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That difference MUST be caused by something else.  Do you know how much resistance is in 5 feet of 16 awg wire?  .02008 ohms.  Even at 1,000 watts, you are talking so little loss in power as to not be noticeable.

Now the fact that this was reproducable has me baffled.  But maybe you always hooked the larger awg wire to channel A, and there was a slight difference in power output between channel A and B (which is another sales trick).  Another possibility is that you always hooked up the same speaker to the larger awg wire and manufacturing tolerances between the speakers produced the audible difference.  But there is just not enough resistance in the wire to be caused by it AFAIK.

Interesting story though. 

thanks for all the replies.  and thanks for the advice about grounding it at the battery. i went to double check and i found i only had 8 gauge wires.  guess i gotta rewire it.

from your experiences, is a cap needed with this kind of power? 1 farad cap? i think i will try it without one first to see if i really need it. thanks again for all the help.

Here are some more replies to ya'all.

(1) No it is not overkill in most cases to ground an amplifier directly to the battery. Just beacuse something is the assumed proper method does not mean it is the one and only way or necessarily even the proper way. The method I use and many other educated and informed installer and manufacturers use is to ground to the battery. But why? As someone earlier pointed out so keanly about how  much resistance is on a 16 gauge wire at 15' (which I'll talk about next), it plays on the topic of resistance on a ground lead.

Any qualified person with the knowledge of how to run a meter, a sound knowledge in math and a desire for audio may know what I'm about to say, for some of you maybe you will see this for the first time. What this equates to is you going into subway, eating a foot long sub and then having your crack sewn shut, get the point!

Electricity is like an algebra equation, what you do to one side you must do to the other. Why do you think a battery has a poitive and a negative post on it. Everyone assumes that you only must upgrade the ground wire to the chassis of the vehicle, yet very few of you take the time to measure the chassis resistance. Unhook the ground wire from your amp, take your meter and set it to resistance, take one lead and put it on the negative terminal of the battery, take the other lead and put it to the end of the ground wire that had been connected to the amp, what you get is a resistance in ohms. A reading avove .5 ohm and bad things can and usually will start to happen to your amplifier. Ever blown up your customers amplifiers and not known why? I guess the people who fix these amps when we send them in do, because it is them that after 1 customer blew his Rockford power 1000, 3 times that the problem was isolated, corrected and no problems again in 4 years. What was his resistance? 867 ohms in a 1998 chevy cavalier. In my experience in 16 years of installing and now 8 years as a store owner, I had never heard of this problem until then. It is now common procedure for my installers to ground directly to the battery. In my experience GM vehicles are the worst offenders, followed by Ford.

What problems happen?

Forget watts, you have an amplifier, not a wattlifier. In order to make power you must get power. What goes in must come out. Current flows from negative to positive, here the problem has started for most people already. With an improper ground at the amplifier, the amplifier (like your crack) cannot get rid of the negative current, this results in a builup of excessive heat in the amp, poor sound quality, a greatly reduced lifespan of the amp, trips to the service shop, whatever. Now it is true that these problems may not exist for everyone, some peoples systems play just fine, but if any of you have had a failure of your amplifier and did not know why, check your resistance on the ground lead. Genreally speaking the more intense the system, the more intense the wiring. Maybe this has shown even 1 person a small difference, maybe not. We all have our own opinions and our own experiences, just wanted to help stop a bad experience from ever happening to you. You work hard for your $, so do I. FYI the shop across the street and the big box across the street do not do this, why, because they are more interested in getting the custoer out the door and getting the next one in, this is somethkng that a specialty shop does not do.

A cap is a great idea for any amplifier system, it is designed to charge and discharge much quicker (hence the name lightning cap) than your battery can, it is closer to the amp and provides an instant burst of current for the amp when it need it. Ask pretty much anyone about dimming lights on the dash etc. and they will all say get a cap and even get a bigger alternator.

Now for the reply on the home speaker topic, go into a local stereo shop and hook it up yourself, you just might hear something. Like alot of people say, put the spec up to your ear and tell me how it sounds. I was not talking about resistane on the speaker wire, I was talking about the current carrying capacity of the wire. Here is a scenario for you to relate to. You have a barrel of water and a 2 identical pumps, each pump (the amplifier) has a hose attached to it. Your install just short circuited and your ride is on fire, do you take hose #1 (the garden hose) or hose#2 (the fire hose). Get the drift!

This is not rocket science or theory, it is something that is tried and true. What you do with this information is up to you.

forbidden wrote:

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Now for the reply on the home speaker topic, go into a local stereo shop and hook it up yourself, you just might hear something. Like alot of people say, put the spec up to your ear and tell me how it sounds. I was not talking about resistane on the speaker wire, I was talking about the current carrying capacity of the wire. Here is a scenario for you to relate to. You have a barrel of water and a 2 identical pumps, each pump (the amplifier) has a hose attached to it. Your install just short circuited and your ride is on fire, do you take hose #1 (the garden hose) or hose#2 (the fire hose). Get the drift!

This is not rocket science or theory, it is something that is tried and true. What you do with this information is up to you.

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And what prevents current from flowing?  Resistance.  What is preventing the water from flowing through the garden hose?  Resistance.  What I was pointing out is that there is almost no resistance.  Your above analogy is not a fair example of the wire resistance.  A better analogy of the situation would be that you have two fire hoses that one, the 16 awg wire, supplies a drop less water per minute than the other one (14 awg or larger).  Now do you really think that drop is going to make a noticable difference in putting out that fire? 

forbidden wrote:

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Try it and find out, I'm not trying to start a pissing contest here at all. Why do you think that a larger amp needs a larger power wire, to carry larger current and by using a smaller speaker wire you are (ignore the specs as I mentioned earlier) limiting the current carrying capacity of the wire, or does physics not apply to speaker wires.

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Physics still do apply.  Why you can use a smaller wire is because the voltage is much higher on the output of an amplifier.  The power wires are limited to 12  volts, so a large amount of current must flow to keep the input power the same.  But the output of the amplifier has a higher voltage, this means you can use smaller wire since the current is much smaller.  Or do you run 4 awg wire to your subwoofer? ;)

As an example, this is why they are switching to the new 42 volt electrical systems in vehicles.  They can run much smaller wires for everything, and still have enough power for the electronics.

I hope you understand that I am not trying to start a pissing contest here.  I was just trying to explain why you don' t need large awg wire for your speaker wire.  But I do have a lot of respect for you in how you present yourself.  It seems like on every other forum, if someone disagrees with you, they start flaming wars.  Thanks for keeping this friendly.

forbidden wrote:

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Have you ever felt a speaker wire that is too small and you are trying to cram all of this current from your brand new big amp down said wire, guess what , that excessive current has to go somewhere, it (by the laws of physics) is transformed into heat that is radiated from the wire. That excess current could have and should have been carried to your speaker and again by the lasw of physics transformed into energy in the form of sound.

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Unfortunately just before the last stereo competition I went to, our shop just ran out of 16 awg wire.  So I used 18 awg wire instead.  This was done with the CEO of Adire Audio present, who happens to be the engineer who designed the subwoofer, and I can assure you knows much more about audio and electronics than both of us combined.  If you don't believe me, do a search on his name at any car audio forum, and I'm sure you will see what I mean.  The amplifier I use is an Arc 1500dr which puts out between 1,000 to 1,200 watts.  I was able to pull a 142.3 dB with it in a .36 cubic foot sealed enclosure.  Plus the wire never got even warm to the touch.  I still haven't swapped out the wires yet, and they never get warm.  And that's with a kilowatt of power.

No offense please, but I find all sorts of questionable statements in your post, beyond the obvious of hearing these "audible and repeatable" differences in wire..

forbidden wrote:

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...one sales ploy I was taught at the store I used to work at (the big box) was rather simple.
...Guess how many people bought the speaker that sounded better because it had better bass response.
...Imagine the customers surprise when we told them the speakers were the same model

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Fundamentally, this being a "sales ploy" that you "were taught" seems infeasible at worst, and fundamentally pointless [as a speaker sales technique] at best.

forbidden wrote:

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You can't hook a garden hose up to a fire hydrant and expect to put out a fire now can you. Use a good gauge wire for all applications. Electricity is an algebra equation, what you do to one side you must do to the other.

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Sure, ohms law... V = I x R.
The only applicable component of that formula is resistance...
So your claim seems to be that the increased resistance of the 16 gauge over the 12 gauge was resulting in an audible difference in power...

Except your claim is that the bass response of the speakers being auditioned changed, not the overall volume levels - which would fundamentally scale up and down across the entire frequency range, should simple DC resistance change.
Rather, to cause the effect that you are describing, the wire would have to be behaving more like an inductor - and in both cases we are talking about a simple length of wire.
Stranded as it may be, many conductors comprising it, it's still got a signal applied at one end to ALL it's strands,  and that signal is being transmitted to the other end uniformly, as all strands are equal. 
Not only is it not likely to display any inductance properties at all, but if any existed, it would be so small as to be inconsequential - particularly in the bass frequencies, where human hearing is inherently less sensitive to any detail or anomoly at any rate, relative to higher frequencies.

Perhaps most fundamentally, the wire gauges you are comparing are simply too small, particularly with the small amount of power flowing through the wire, particuarly in your audition scenario.

The difference in capacity between 12 and 16 gauge isn't very large to begin with, the current carrying capacities of the two wires is likewise not dramatically different.
And in all cases with wire gauge, the limits of a wire are reached when a certain amount of current (or power) is passing through them.
In an audition in a shop, it should be safe to assume reasonable volume levels - and therefore reasonable power levels - after all, as you scale the volume back with the volume knob [down from absolute maximum full-bore levels that is], you are effectively reducing the power going through the wire, to the speaker.
It doesn't matter how large the amp is, what matters is how much power you are actually sending to the speaker at that moment.

So it's not likely that you would have stressed the 16 gauge... possibly not even 22 gauge or smaller, depending on how loud you were running.

forbidden wrote:

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 I would use a 4 gauge ground (especially with Rockford amps) and power direct from the battery to a distribution block like a Lightning Audio LL10db (add the cap here) and continue with 4 gauge to each amp for power and ground. !6 gauge wire is probably adequate for your front and rear speakers, make sure it is not the factory junk though. The higher the strand count in the wire the higher the current the wire can carry. Amplifiers need power to make power, if they can't get the current they need to do their job or the current is resricted on the way to the speaker, do not expect to get the level of excellence that the product was designed for. Yes I also said ground the amplifiers (especially Rockford) directly to the battery to prevent amplifier failure (resistance on a ground lead). Need info on this I'll be happy to share. The more people that continue to do things right, the better.

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With reference to your comment of "running a ground wire from the amps directly to the battery", this is actually wholly a bad idea, for many reasons.

Primarily, your car chassis IS tied to the negative terminal of your battery, via a very short length of power wire - and the total amount of metal comprising your car's chassis would make for one MONSTER gauge wire.

Now, I could see a myth like what you state being concluded by a misunderstanding installer who failed to secure the amp's ground to the chassis via a solid (and bare) metal-on-metal connection, or maybe even who was exceeding the current flow capabilities of the stock battery ground or alternator power wire limitations.
But running a secondary length of ground wire to the amps is not only expensive, but is another potentially large source of RFI you are running through the car(and who likes whines and noise in their systems?), since inherently we're talking about high levels of current flow through the wires.
Also, if the amp is also chassis-grounded, the difference in resistance between the chassis ground's return path and the wire's return path can create a ground loop - another potential source of noise.

Finally, it's not the strand count at all that dictates the current carrying capabilities of the wire.  The only thing a higher strand count does is make installation easier, because it will be inherently more flexible.
Current carrying capability is simply a function of the wire gauge itself, in conjunction with the length of the wire being used - both of which contribute to the overall internal resistance of the wire, which in turn will burn up current in the wire, causing some amount of heat... the less resistance, the less heat. 

Hopefully that clarifies a few tiny details for everyone... 

Oh, and hi, btw... nice forum.

forbidden wrote:

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...No it is not overkill in most cases to ground an amplifier directly to the battery. Just beacuse something is the assumed proper method does not mean it is the one and only way or necessarily even the proper way. The method I use and many other educated and informed installer and manufacturers use is to ground to the battery.

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The actual chassis as a return path for current isn't a bottleneck.
The correct thing to do would be to properly diagnose where the bottleneck IS, if one actually exists:

forbidden wrote:

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But why?
...resistance on a ground lead.

...Electricity is like an algebra equation, what you do to one side you must do to the other. Why do you think a battery has a poitive and a negative post on it.

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Hence, anything wired between the positive and negative terminals become a load on that voltage source, in the circuit itself.
As per Ohms Law (mentioned in my last post) - V = I x R - if you decrease the resistance, you'll inherently increase the current flowing through the circuit, given a static voltage potential (as is a 12v battery, roughly).

Anything wired in series in that circuit contributes additively to the resistance in that circuit.
In the installation scenario being discussed, you've got connectors, the amplifier, fusing, and multiple connections to consider, in addition to the vehicle's chassis, and the stock battery ground and connections there (which often should be upgraded).

Measuring the macro, and then blaming one discrete factor as the cause is very unscientific, and your assumption is leading you to the wrong conclusion.

You clearly described a very "macro" measurement technique here:

forbidden wrote:

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Everyone assumes that you only must upgrade the ground wire to the chassis of the vehicle, yet very few of you take the time to measure the chassis resistance. Unhook the ground wire from your amp, take your meter and set it to resistance, take one lead and put it on the negative terminal of the battery, take the other lead and put it to the end of the ground wire that had been connected to the amp, what you get is a resistance in ohms.
...867 ohms in a 1998 chevy cavalier.

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Rather than discussing how simply unrealistic that number actually is, let's discuss the flaw in your measurement.
You're measuring everything - meaning you can't conclude any specific discrete item within that measurement path is at fault.

Inherently, if you unbolted your amp's ground wire from it's location, and unbolted your battery's ground wire from it's chassis-mount location, touched the terminals of your multimeter to the threaded holes left behind, you'd inherently measure something only nominally exceeding 0 for resistance.

One likely location for problem is the stock battery ground, which often is NOT bare metal-on-metal... rather, it's bolted to the painted chassis, and paint is an insulator.
Same may hold true for an installer who assumes otherwise... you could have two locations in the circuit with more resistance than is necessary...
Neither of them related to grounding to, or through, the vehicle's chassls.

And similarly, you could have poor connections and the like elsewhere in that macro, all-encompassing path you are measuring.

forbidden wrote:

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In my experience in 16 years of installing and now 8 years as a store owner, I had never heard of this problem until then. It is now common procedure for my installers to ground directly to the battery.

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...and It simply isn't "common practice" to run ground wires back to theb attery... common practice is to ground to the chassis - in a proper manner, of course.
As I mentioned above, the potential for additional RFI (would-be two high current wires running above-chassis!), and potential for ground loops are both negatives, not to mention the higher cost, both in money, and in installation effort and consideration.

forbidden wrote:

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...Current flows from negative to positive, here the problem has started for most people already. With an improper ground at the amplifier, the amplifier (like your crack) cannot get rid of the negative current...

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A circuit is more like a circular train track... which is occupied by a train with many cars, extending all the way around the train track, so that the nose of the engine was actually hitched right back into the rear of the caboose.
The train station represents the battery in this analogy, and the multiple "stops" around the track represent various loads in this series circuit, where work is to be done.
If there's so much friction at one of those stops around the track that it stops the train from moving, the entire train stops moving.

That's analogous to a part of a circuit representing a nearly infinite resistance.... like cutting the wire, or unplugging a fuse.
Presenting a large resistance is essentially similar, to a lesser degree however.

That's really basic electricity...

forbidden wrote:

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...but if any of you have had a failure of your amplifier and did not know why, check your resistance on the ground lead.

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Again, there's really no such thing as overkill when it comes to wiring... but even if you need to stick to the smallest you can get away with (possibly financial constraints), there are charts available to let you know what proper wiring gauges are, given potential current draw and wire run lengths.

forbidden wrote:

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Now for the reply on the home speaker topic, go into a local stereo shop and hook it up yourself, you just might hear something. Like alot of people say, put the spec up to your ear and tell me how it sounds.

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In reality, you are comparing two pieces of wire, that might have many distinct differences, only one of them being their gauge.
And also in reality, you are highly unlikely to hear any difference at all...
Generally that is exactly the difference that people who have mocked up A/B style tests in their homes have concluded... even in comparing stranded silver wire to copper lamp cord.
Furthermore, when differences are heard, sometimes it's one wire, sometimes it's the other that sound better.
This is an old debate - it continues because of these inconclusive factors.

forbidden wrote:

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I was not talking about resistane on the speaker wire, I was talking about the current carrying capacity of the wire. Here is a scenario for you to relate to. You have a barrel of water and a 2 identical pumps, each pump (the amplifier) has a hose attached to it. Your install just short circuited and your ride is on fire, do you take hose #1 (the garden hose) or hose#2 (the fire hose).

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That's actually quite analogous to the scenario here...
The difference in resistance of the two wires discussed here is likely to be, for all practical purposes, almost immeasurable, given reasonable lengths (such as the 5' lengths mentioned here).

Very true... they recommend that length simply arbitrarily though (They must recommend a gauge of wire, to go along with that length?), the real importance of that recommendation is ironically the same reason that forbidden has been arguing...
Minimizing the resistance of the ground wire.  - and realistically, minimizing the resistance of your power wiring as a whole... it's an entire circuit, the entire resistance must be considered.
Unfortunately, you need to run a long wire to the positive side of the battery.  You do not need to run a long and unfortunately resistive wire to the negative side of the battery - this is the goal of RF and other's very generalized (and potentially misinterpretable) statements about keeping that ground wire short, to keep the overall power circuit resistance as low as possible, minimizing voltage drops, degradations in amp performance, overstressing the car's electrical system, etc.

They generally recommend you disconnect your battery's negative terminal for most stock automotive electrical work because it's simply a safety net - literally a catch-all for every single circuit in your car... and that's specifically because the car is used as a ground plane for everything, the battery is a voltage source for everything, it's always in the circuit when the car is not running.

However, for most car audio work south of the head unit, it's actually recommended that you instead disconnect the main fuse (which should be located within 18" of your battery, up front), which will break the circuit only for any electronics installed off of that main power wire - such as those you would be working on back there.

That will save you the hassle of having to reprogram all your radio station presets, and reset the clock(s) in your car, not to mention your car's ECU's memory, etc.
Disconnecting the negative is a true pain, that way - because it is in the path of every circuit in the car.

Thanks for the pissing match guys, feel better now? I think it's best to let us all know if you are in fact a person who has an direct relations to a manufacturer who is in fact trying to cram their companies beliefs down our throats, or are you the customers know it all best friend? If you are a manufacturer then I'm sure that we are all aware that no product is the best product for all applications, and that they all work differently in different applications or does your equipment work the best in all applications, a pretty arrogant assumption for arrogant replies like yours. What a person does with information is up to them, let them use it and make their own opinions. Maybe just maybe some of my experience in the last 16 years has come hands on and has been duplicated by the tech gurues at Rockford Corporation and other tech departments and they have asked us to do things a certain way in order to solve the problem, but now you wouldn't be privy to that information would you? Keep going on your path guys, I'll keep going on mine and I'm pretty sure that our paths won't cross. While I have always stated that I continually learn new things everday, I for one do not profess to know everything, unlike you, oh it must hurt you to be wrong now doesn't it!

I am actually just a lowly installer who can't even come close to your experience in the bay.  But I have done a lot of studying within my field to understand how things work.  This helps me in troubleshooting situations.  Do I claim to be right all the time?  Absolutely not.  I know I am wrong at times, and when someone shows me this is true, I always admit it.  I figure a little hurt pride is worth the lesson I learned.  And to tell you the truth, usually I find out that the hurt pride is in my own mind, and the others don't care.

Now I see above some pretty harsh accusations, and I just don't see them having any merit in the conversation.  Did either of us say our product was better than someone elses?  And the only manufacturer relationship even mentioned was from you.  You are the one using something you heard by a manufacturer, and trying to "cram their companies beliefs down our throats".  What we did was provide logic, reason, and the physics involved in a way to show what actually happens to support our position.  I don't see any of this from you to prove your opinion is sound.  You can definitely do what you want with the information we provide.  But don't make irrational, imagined accusations about what we said.  I don't know why you think your position is supported only on the basis that you have 16 years as an installer.  Because I know that Dan Wiggins (who was the one who said 16 awg wire is fine) resume beats that by far.  And I'm pretty sure Geolemon's does as well.

forbidden wrote:

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I think it's best to let us all know if you are in fact a person who has an direct relations to a manufacturer who is in fact trying to cram their companies beliefs down our throats, or are you the customers know it all best friend?

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forbidden wrote:

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If you are a manufacturer then I'm sure that we are all aware that no product is the best product for all applications, and that they all work differently in different applications or does your equipment work the best in all applications, a pretty arrogant assumption for arrogant replies like yours.

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These are ironic (and emotionally charged) comments, as your original post would lead a reader to believe that they should - as a generalization - perform their install in the manner which you described.
My comments were in fact in pointing out that - as a generalization - these techniques were not to the end of the goal that you were claiming, and also that your conclusions that led to these techniques were also - as a generalization - flawed... and in fact the techniques that you were mentioning, if applied - particularly as a generalization - by an enthusiast, they would actually be counterproductive.

There's a large distinction to be made, also, between arrogance and objectivity...
Arrogance is the an undue faith in one's own knowledge, often evidenced by an overbearing pride and condescending manner
Objectivity is the application of other's knowledge, judgment based on observable phenomena, with sources that can be backed up either culturally or literarily.

Interestingly --- many of your claims seem unfounded... you've stated numerous times in this one thread how many numerous years of experience you have... and now you reply to my posts with a very condescending attitude, throwing personal attacks (I am pleased that you found nothing objective to refute of my posts)...

I would say that it is not me that is posting "arrogant assumptions and arrogant replies". 

forbidden wrote:

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...but now you wouldn't be privy to that information would you?

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So - I solidly believe you should question strongly any information that you have that counters essentially what the "rest of the world" believes to be the truth, because most likely that information is a misunderstanding, or a misconclusion. 
Look at the possible points where you may have jumped to conclusion, rather than arrived at it.

forbidden wrote:

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Keep going on your path guys, I'll keep going on mine and I'm pretty sure that our paths won't cross. While I have always stated that I continually learn new things everday, I for one do not profess to know everything, unlike you, oh it must hurt you to be wrong now doesn't it!

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I certainly don't know everything, I sure don't profess to... if I only post on topics that I can contribute postively to - that is much different...
I was fortunate to have spent a good deal of time in Las Vegas this past week talking to some real gurus after SEMA show hours, posing questions, filling in newly found voids and creating even more.

Be thirsty for information, but also be willing to question and drop any of your existing information in favor of the new - because particularly in the past few years, large shifts are being made in the industry, new technologies emerging, many (most?) of them to tackle the traditional difficulties faced in the car audio installation bay... eliminating many "weakest links" that formerly had significant installation workarounds.

Regardless - always question the sources of your new knowledge, don't be afraid to challenge them - truths will always inherently withstand against attacks (and I don't use words like "always" often!) -and those confident of those truths won't fail to be able defend against (or mind) a little devil's advocacy.  Or if they aren't able to - that's why these forums exist.  Put something out there, and let the world try to slam holes through it. 

No kidding, deep indeed, my words were not intended to offend anyone and if I did, I can say I'm sorry, and no one is just a lowly installer, they are a valued member of a team. While I will conceed that there are definitely people out there who do know more than I do, there are also people out there that may know more than them. Now while the vast majority of installers do upgrade the ground at the battery (and in most cases they should), very few actually take the time to measure the resistance in the frame of the vehicle. This was my point. Some vehicles are great and we don't have the long procedure and extra cost to the customer of grounding direct to battery. I'm sure that we are all aware that they don't make vehicles like they used to. When I have a customer with his Rockford Power 1000 and he has blown it three times and each time it is directly related to a grounding issue and we follow the tech departments advice each time in order to solve the problem, well maybe the tech's had to do some reaching in order to help us solve this problem. Did the customer install it himself, yes, did he do the recommended upgrades each time, yes, and finally I was shown how to check the resistance on the ground return of the vehicle, problem identified and corrected with grounding directly to the amp. Do I ground all amplifier in this way for all of my customers, no I do not, I do however take the necessary steps I was taught in order to help prevent the problem from arising again. Have you guys out there ever tried this, maybe you should, it can't hurt at all. I learned something and will continue to learn more and expect to do so as well, even from your feedback on this site I would imagine. And yes I did actually find two vehicles with huge resistances on the ground returns, one a 2001 Ford Ranger, the other a 97 Chevy Cavalier, I would not have found this if I didn't know to look for it.

Now as for the speaker wire scenario hooking up to subs, yes I also agree that 16 gauge can be used to wire subs, why not 18 gauge or even 24. Now most people would say don't use 24 gauge, it can't pass the current, it's too small, maybe you will agree with this and if you do, great, if you don't great as well. I'm sure I'll see the techno garble up here to prove the point from someone. So next time wire your customer new subs with 24 gauge and hear how it sounds, then wire it with 16 gauge and compare the two. My point was that I will use a 12 gauge or even up to 8 gauge depending on the needs and capabilities of the system, and as a general rule I do use 12 gauge and most amplifiers also are designed for up to a 12 gauge for a reason, or does the tech guy who designs the amplifier not talk to the tech guy who hooks them up. So depending on the application, choose the appropriate wire size.