Amp adding bass when no signal is present

[wsster]

I recently hooked up my old school Audio Art 400.2 amp to a new VPRO 152D, running bridged. For some reason when there is no bass being present, the amp will start producing a punch bass. Could this be an issue with the amp, as it is 28 years old at this point?

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[wew lad 5,000+ posts]

Could be an issue with the caps in the amp, or it could be more picky with your grounding. If it's only this amp it's probably the amp but it's very worthwhile to check your grounding

 

[Lasherž]

I recently hooked up my old school Audio Art 400.2 amp to a new VPRO 152D, running bridged. For some reason when there is no bass being present, the amp will start producing a punch bass. Could this be an issue with the amp, as it is 28 years old at this point?

It could also maybe be inverted polarity on one of the RCA or speaker sets if it's an LOC. The bass you'll get then is extremely unpredictable and it happens specifically when there's a side to side sweep in the music.

Given that it's an old amp though, caps are quite likely.. They didn't used to make caps as good as they do now.

 

[wsster]

Yeah, my Alpine for my highs has no issues, it is just the one amp. I was hoping not to need to purchase a new amp, yet, listening to the output, I don't feel as though it is putting out enough power, and the added signal, I guess I'm gonna have to. Thanks for the info all!

 

[wew lad 5,000+ posts]

Yeah, my Alpine for my highs has no issues, it is just the one amp. I was hoping not to need to purchase a new amp, yet, listening to the output, I don't feel as though it is putting out enough power, and the added signal, I guess I'm gonna have to. Thanks for the info all!

Those audio art amps are worth recapping, at least if it's the line I'm thinking of

 

[Slo_Ride 5,000+ posts]

Probably the amp bro

 

[Lasherž]

Those audio art amps are worth recapping, at least if it's the line I'm thinking of

Yeah, honestly if you can say with decent certainty that replacing the caps would work then it's always worth swapping them. With amplifiers the only difficult thing about swapping caps is that they absorb a lot of heat before the solder melts because they've got beefy ground plains. At the very least you'll want a ceramic element soldering iron with an adjustable heat setting, otherwise you'll just heat up the board without melting the solder trying to get them off. The caps themselves are going to be cheap and if you can get new ones from a good brand they'll last far longer than the old ones. There are many caps that have 25 year lifespans in typical use cases.