Amp Squealing

[joelp88]

Recently bought an amp on here used and am trying to figure out what's wrong with it before doing anything else. It's a Soundstream PCX 2000D. Here's whats happening:

9 times out of 10 when you turn the amp on, it will take a few seconds with the protect light on, then switch over to the power light and will emit a squealing noise from the subs. The pitch of this squeal changes based on the setting of the low pass filter.

1 out of 10 times, if you sit there turning the stereo on and off, it will eventually power up just find and works perfectly with no issue. You can blast it and whatever. No weird noises.

I'm trying to figure out what could be the cause of this problem. I got the amp on Sunday and was waiting to see if it was maybe a bad ground or something before doing anything else. Yesterday I installed all 0/1 gauge throughout the car, did the big 3 upgrade and have a + and - run from my front battery to my Kinetik power cell in the back. Voltages are all good and steady at around 14V even while playing moderately loud.

I also have two other amps in the car, each of which power on and work fine. No issues. The last monoblock also worked without issue.

Looking for ideas!

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[s_carter 10+ year member]

Sounds like a bad capacitor in the crossover network to me. open it up, and look for bulging caps.

 

[ThatChevyGuy 5,000+ posts]

sounds like amp or rca problem

 

[groundpound4200 5,000+ posts]

I got an amp back from repair that did this. Is it coming form the amp itself too or just the speakers?

 

[subzero 5,000+ posts]

bad gounds, bad RCA connections. Wrong RCA connection-pluged into wrong ports., a short somewhere.

 

[joelp88]

It does it without RCAs plugged in, and the sound comes from the subs (doesn't make sound if the subs aren't plugged in). I thought it may be the ground but as I said it did it before, and is doing it now with all 0/1 going straight from battery in front to my deka intimidator in the back, and then to the subs. With everything plugged in the resistance is less than .5 at the terminals at the amp. I'll have to look for bulging caps. What's weird is if you turn the amp on it almost always does this, then if you turn it off and back on extremely quickly it always does not. That said, the xover is not filtering out what it should be when you do this..