Sub, wiring, amp, maybe even head unit problems

[Paladin517]

Okay, need a little help. Today my subs started wiggin out. I was washin my car and had the music on, I started to notice the bass was cuttin out so i popped the trunk, low and behold, it was cuttin out, at the power level, the power light on the amp would go out, as would the bass, duh, so me and my dad tested a couple of theories. first we hooked our camcorder up to the RCA jacks running to my subs and they worked fine, then we plugged the RCA lead from my head unit up to a boom box and that worked fine, but when the subs are plugged into the head unit, they keep phasing on and off. But when i turn the bass down on my head unit, they dont kick off, but when i turn it back up, it cuts out. WOW!! So if anyone can help me it would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!!

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[Alaxan 5,000+ posts]

Originally posted by Paladin517 Okay, need a little help. Today my subs started wiggin out. I was washin my car and had the music on, I started to notice the bass was cuttin out so i popped the trunk, low and behold, it was cuttin out, at the power level, the power light on the amp would go out, as would the bass, duh, so me and my dad tested a couple of theories. first we hooked our camcorder up to the RCA jacks running to my subs and they worked fine, then we plugged the RCA lead from my head unit up to a boom box and that worked fine, but when the subs are plugged into the head unit, they keep phasing on and off. But when i turn the bass down on my head unit, they dont kick off, but when i turn it back up, it cuts out. WOW!! So if anyone can help me it would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!!

Sounds to me like you have an overheating issue. Often times when an amp is being pushed too hard and has little to no ventilation it will overheat and cut out. Sometimes for longer periods sometimes for shorter periods of time. It mostly depends on the amp and brand, but was it hot to the touch at all? It could also be that the gain is improperly set and the amp is clipping out due to that. The gain on the amp is (for the most part) suppose to be only adjusted one time and done. To set this properly turn up the headunit about to the max and turn down the gain all the way....Slowly increase it until you hear a bit of distortion and then turn it back down a couple of notches.

Any further questions feel free to ask away and I will help the best I can.

 

[Paladin517]

No, it wasn't hot at all. I've had this system for about a year and a half and it has never done this before. My Dad seems to think that it might be that the RCA inputs on my amp may be and and wanted to see if it would cut out if we hooked the amp up through speaker wire, but we havn't odne anything yet so, i don't know.

 

[Alaxan 5,000+ posts]

Well you have already eliminated the head unit by running somethign else off of it. Have you tweaked with the gain controls at all before this happened? The gain control is a direct line with the RCA's as it controls the amount of signal received and sent into the amp.

 

[Paladin517]

Yeah, my dad was messing with it on the amp yesterday but it didn't do much, although i didn't do what you said before, turn the head unit all the way up and it all the way down, but yeah.