Getting back into it

It has been at least 8 years since I have done anything with audio so as you can guess I have forgotten a thing or ten. Here is what I have and tell me if I am doing this wrong. I have a single Kicker Solobaric S10L74 sub w/dual voice coils. My Amp is able to run bridged. If I wire the sub in series between the two coils and then connect that bridged to the amp everything will be kosher at 4 ohms. Is this correct or have I screwed something up here? The amp in question is a Kenwood KAC-7251. This should give me 460 watts X1 channel. Have I really forgotten a lot here and I am no where even close to being correct. Please help my mind out and let me know if I should give up all together or proceed with my install. TIA. John

You're not going to get 4 ohms with a dual 4 ohm sub. You can get 2 ohm or 8 ohm.

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The Flakman
I feel strange. I have deja vu and amnesia at the same time.

John | Manteca, CA

Flakman that is correct. 2 ohm or 8 ohm for a DVC 4 ohm sub. So bridging an Amp has nothing to do with changing the ohms? I was under the impression that it did. If it does not then I need to buy a new amp. Crap

Your amp will run @ 4 ohm stereo, 2 ohm stereo, and 4 ohm bridged (which is typical). You could run it at 4 ohm stereo and get 150Watts per VC, 300Watts total for your sub. Not too bad, but usable until you can get another amp (I would trade up). I like the JL 500/1 or even the Alpine MRD-M605. There are lots of great amps out there that would push 500-600Watts to that sub very nicely.

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The Flakman
I feel strange. I have deja vu and amnesia at the same time.

John | Manteca, CA

nouseforaname is correct, forgot about that.

There's just no good abbreviation for your nick, nouseforaname. Just typing nouse doesn't sound right LOL!

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The Flakman
I feel strange. I have deja vu and amnesia at the same time.

John | Manteca, CA

I will just ditch the amp. I was trying to get away with it because I am selling the car anyway. It has nothing to do with reading other threads. In my first post it states that I have not done this in like 8 years, maybe even more than that. I just refuse to sell a car with issues, even if they are only with the stereo install. Whomever did the install on the car knew nothing of what they were doing. This is obvious because of the very amp and sub that they were using. Anyway I will just throw this amp on ebay and try to find one that is 2 ohm stable. I am not looking for top of the line as I said this is getting sold. Hence the reason I am going to stick with like Kenwood, Alpine, etc... All I need is between 450-600 watts for one channel and I will run the sub in series. Thank you for all your help. Much appreciated and I am at least on the right track now.

Ok after my last post I started thinking do I really want to spend more money on another amp? No I really dont. So what I am wondering now is what would be better. The sub can take between 450 and 600 watts. This of course is running both VC's and the type of enclosure used. So what I am wondering is which should I go with. Should I just wire up one VC and hook it into the amp @ 4 ohms with 150W ( I think that is way under powered, I know I have to cut total power roughly in half when running only one VC). Or I can wire each VC to it's own channel on the amp for 150W to each voice coil ( better I think) or I can wire up both VC's to run @ 2 ohms and run that into the amp for 230 watts total. What do you all think? Please help the newb out. Also I noticed that this amp is 2 ohm stable but for the previous mentioned 230 watts X 2 channels. I would only be able to take advantage of one of those channels though if I understand things correctly. Thanks again for all the help and recommendations.

Your best bet is to hook up one VC with the amplifier bridged. One VC @ 4 ohms with the amp bridged will give you 430Watts minus about 10-15% which is about 350-370watts. That will give you the highest wattage for your sub.

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The Flakman
I feel strange. I have deja vu and amnesia at the same time.

John | Manteca, CA

Hmmm, things started sounding really wierd to me. I decided to break out some books and do some research about my original post stating I was going to wire the subs voice coils in series and then to the amp bridged. I was getting the impression this was not kosher.

I opened up one of the stereo books I have to the Amp section and here is what it states. " You must normally use a 4-ohm or higher speaker load when bridging. This means you cant run two 4-ohm woofers wired in parallel, for example. This is because a bridged amplifier "sees" a speaker load of half the actual value, so a 4-ohm speaker looks like a 2-ohm equivilant load. Very few amps can handle anything less than 4 ohms in the bridged mode. So if you were thinking of saving big money by running 2-ohm loads and bridging with the same amplifier, forget it."

So, please can someone explain in detail why I cannot run the configuartion that I had originally mentioned in my first post. Wiring the dual voice coil sub in series which would show a load of 8-ohms. Then bridging that connection with the amp effectively cutting that rating in half which is now 4-ohms. Please break it down Barney style for me as this appears perfectly ok after reading an actual manual on this setup. My Amp manual specifically states Bridged @ 4 ohms = 460W X 1. Thanks again for all the help. John

Your amp will run 460 Watts @ 4 ohms. True, your amp will have no problem handling the 8 ohm load, but that would effectively cut your output in half giving you 230 Watts. That is why it was advised that you run the amp bridged to only one VC to get the most wattage you can to your subwoofer with the amp you have. Power output is inversely related to the impedence of the load present.

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The Flakman
I feel strange. I have deja vu and amnesia at the same time.

John | Manteca, CA

You're selling the car, right?  Take out the system and sell everything as separates.  That's what I'd do, since that's the only way you'll come out a winner with this deal.  Who wants to buy a car with a system only to find out that the sub is using only one voice coil...or that it's bridged at 8 ohms (and has no SQ in the name)?  That just puts the burden on the buyer to get things squared away.

You probably got this already, but anyway:  when an amp is spec'd as "2 ohm stable", the stabilty refers to per channel.  A two channel amp is stable to 2 ohms per channel...just like a one channel (mono) amp is stable to 2 ohms per channel.  A bridged load on a 2 channel amp doesn't "see" anything from the load;  the load is simply split across the two channels.  An 8 ohm load becomes a 4 ohm load onto each of the two channels.  The output would be the same as the rated 4 ohm stereo output.

Your stereo amplifier might be better utilized by someone for running a set of front components, and that sub would like to meet a mono amp.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.