i have a problem with blowing amps.
Printed From: the12volt.com
Forum Name: Car Audio
Forum Discription: Car Stereos, Amplifiers, Crossovers, Processors, Speakers, Subwoofers, etc.
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=88871
Printed Date: April 25, 2024 at 11:12 AM
Topic: i have a problem with blowing amps.
Posted By: chris305
Subject: i have a problem with blowing amps.
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 10:54 AM
is it true that if your voltage drops to low for to long will it blow your amp? cause i have 8 12in kicker cvx dual 4ohms. with two power acoustik 4200rms at 1ohm. with 2 yellow tops in the back and one red top for the front. and a 300amp alternator. and this is the second amp i have blown. i do play it on idle sometimes and the amp blows in a day. now when i do play it my voltage goes to 11. something and stays around 12.something while im playing it on idle. do i not have enough batteries or what's? need help to figure out why i keep blowing amps
Replies:
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 11:16 AM
11-12 volts is not likely to lead to blown amps (although they are Power Acoustik so who knows?) More likely is you are overloading them. They may be stable at 1-ohm, meaning they do not go into protection, but this does not mean they are actually designed to sustain a 1-ohm load for very long, especially not at high volume levels. I suspect you are simply pushing low-end amps too hard and they are burning up. ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: chris305
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 1:07 PM
what you mean low end amps to hard and are burning up? what is in the amp is buring?
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 1:22 PM
chris305 wrote:
what you mean low end amps to hard and are burning up? what is in the amp is buring?
If my guess is correct you are most likely burning up an output transistor or two. Pushing them too hard + low build quality = they get too hot and fail. ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: chris305
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 1:51 PM
oh ok so how to you provent that? and is it fixitble?. also what the amp does is that when i turn off the car the light of the amp stays on too. and even if i take out the remote wire. only way to shut off the amp is taking the power wire out. why does it do that
Posted By: aznboi3644
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 2:05 PM
you can prevent that buy wiring the amps at 2 ohms...if you can.
He means even though the Power Acoustik amp says it is stable at 1 ohm the amp MOST lIKELY will not live for long being pushed at that load...because of crappy quality prolly
Also how are your gains set???
Posted By: jeffchilcott
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 2:34 PM
The way I look at it you have $1200-$1600 in woofers, $500-$600 in batteries, a good $400 in your alt
but only a $200 amp? whats wrong with this picture?
You have woofers that will handle up to 6000 Watts RMS
Why dont you look into something higher quality that would match the rest of the good equipment you already have
Look into a pair of kicker KX2500.1 They will produce real power not just boasted numbers and are very reliable
-------------
2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place
Posted By: oxygen65
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 4:01 PM
what about a earthquake phd5000, i kno it says that it is 2 ohm stable but i called earthquake and they said that it is 1 ohm stable as long as you dont run it under 12 volts. so does that mean that i can run it at 1 ohm all day and run it pretty hard? or is it gonna blow like the power acoustiks amp?
Posted By: jeffchilcott
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 4:53 PM
i would say if it dosent say it in the factory specs I would be a little leary. If you can get a email from earthquake saying they will repair it if it blows up, then I would go for it
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2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place
Posted By: godblessdremil
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 5:38 PM
You spent the money for the system. If you really want to go cheap get an alphasonik amp, they got a long warranty and i put them through a alot of doodie even outlasted a JL amp. And they are 1 ohm stable. Stop thinking cheap on the amps you invest so much in the other stuff and you bitch out on this one thing.
Posted By: aznboi3644
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 7:48 PM
I though Alphasonik was owned by Audiobahn...not really sure just heard it on another forum
Posted By: jeffchilcott
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 8:19 PM
alphasonik is ownder by the annaba group, which owns audiobahn, ichibahn, and quite a few others I cant think of off the top of my head
-------------
2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place
Posted By: chris305
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 8:22 PM
well i do have it running at 2ohms. i had two ma audio amps 4000's but there stable at 2ohm and the protection comes on all the time so i changed them to two power acoustik 5000's and i blow one ma audio and i blow one power acoustik 5000. and the kicker 2500 is only going to give them 625rms i wanan run atlteast 850rms to them. and if i get the kicker 1500 each amp plays two thats 2000 in just the amps and i dont have space for 4 amps that size. cause kicker subs could always take more rims than it says. also my gains are set all the way up on both. and bass boast at 18hz on both i want them subs to jump out the box or wanan jump out. i dont wanna have to put my raido on vol 50 somethin to get them loud. i just put it on vol 20 and its hitting hard
Posted By: jeffchilcott
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 9:19 PM
chris305 wrote:
well i do have it running at 2ohms. i had two ma audio amps 4000's but there stable at 2ohm and the protection comes on all the time so i changed them to two power acoustik 5000's and i blow one ma audio and i blow one power acoustik 5000. and the kicker 2500 is only going to give them 625rms i wanan run atlteast 850rms to them. and if i get the kicker 1500 each amp plays two thats 2000 in just the amps and i dont have space for 4 amps that size. cause kicker subs could always take more rims than it says. also my gains are set all the way up on both. and bass boast at 18hz on both i want them subs to jump out the box or wanan jump out. i dont wanna have to put my raido on vol 50 somethin to get them loud. i just put it on vol 20 and its hitting hard
You have your gain all the way up!!!! there is your first problem.
your second problem is the fact that you think the power acous ta junk can produce over 1200 watts at all.
The 2500 would put more power then you have ever heard on those woofers
You need to read about how to set you gain, IT IS NOT A VOLUME KNOB
invest in some good amps please! power costs money! you should figure $200-300 per real 1000 watts of power if not more!
------------- 2009 0-1000 Trunk WR 154.0DB 2009 1001+ Trunk WR
2007 USACI World Champion
2007 World Record
2006 USACI Finals 2nd Place
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: January 13, 2007 at 10:41 PM
chris305 wrote:
also my gains are set all the way up on both. and bass boast at 18hz on both
Duh. This is a perfect recipe for blowing amps, subs or both. As Jeff says, you are destroying your gear because you apparently don't know what you are doing. Set them up correctly, and get some decent amps if you want decent power. ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: aznboi3644
Date Posted: January 14, 2007 at 1:52 AM
lol...gains ALL THE WAY UP AND BASS BOOST ON +18db
Yeah this is why you are blowing your amps man...seriously read the sticky on how to set your gains.
the gain is NOT a volume knob...
Posted By: chris305
Date Posted: January 14, 2007 at 12:37 PM
ok but the higher the gain the more power the amp puts out at low vols. it doesnt matter how the gain is if the gain shows that it can go all the way up ima put them liek that so i get all the power out of the amp. and power acoustik is a good amp cost me $600. and the ma audios are good amps too and they cost me $500. its not all bout that. its about why i blow them for theres got to be a reason. because i had a concept amp that cost $300 and it was 2410 at 1ohm and i had it at 1 ohm playing 4 15in kicker cvr and i didnt have a problem with the gain and bass boast all the way up. until i put a 5th 15 on it and it put the ohm loud to 0.8ohm and thats when i blow it. but it lasted over a year of just pounding. and as it says in the book to put the gain ass you put the vol. it doesnt make a diff if you put the gain half way or all the way. all it does is that you could just put your vol on your radio louder if its at half way gain.it probably cant take the heat for long
Posted By: chris305
Date Posted: January 14, 2007 at 12:42 PM
what i was told that the higher you put the gain the more powerr you need to give the amps and i think i dont have the power to putout to the amps and thats why its shorting out. if i were to put them half way i think ti will last longer until i get more batteries and a second alternator
Posted By: aznboi3644
Date Posted: January 14, 2007 at 1:11 PM
chris305 wrote:
ok but the higher the gain the more power the amp puts out at low vols. it doesnt matter how the gain is if the gain shows that it can go all the way up ima put them liek that so i get all the power out of the amp. and power acoustik is a good amp cost me $600. and the ma audios are good amps too and they cost me $500. its not all bout that. its about why i blow them for theres got to be a reason. because i had a concept amp that cost $300 and it was 2410 at 1ohm and i had it at 1 ohm playing 4 15in kicker cvr and i didnt have a problem with the gain and bass boast all the way up. until i put a 5th 15 on it and it put the ohm loud to 0.8ohm and thats when i blow it. but it lasted over a year of just pounding. and as it says in the book to put the gain ass you put the vol. it doesnt make a diff if you put the gain half way or all the way. all it does is that you could just put your vol on your radio louder if its at half way gain.it probably cant take the heat for long
hahaha dude seriously you need to do some research and learn man...the gain is NOT a volume knob...the "power" that your getting is most likely a horrible distorted clipped signal and your setup prolly sounds like crap from it.
if you think that you can just crank the gain and bass boost all the way up and expect it to sound "good" and for the amp to put out a "clean signal" than you are pretty ignorant...and whoever told you the higher you turn up the gain the more power the amp puts out...yeah thats true to a certain extent depending on many factors...but seriously you need to do some research
Taken from www.bcae1.com
"Amplifier Gain Controls:
Contrary to popular belief, an amplifiers gain control does not determine the maximum power that an amplifier can produce. As long as the preamp/drive signal has sufficient level, the amplifier will produce its maximum power output level. The gain controls are used to match the amplifer's gain to the gain of the other amplifiers in the system (in the case of a multi-amp system). The gain controls also allow you to match the amplifier(s) to the head unit. Not all head units have the same maximum preamp output voltage. Some head units are capable of producing 9 vrms out while others are only capable of 1.5 vrms out."
you can read more about the gain control here
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