Fixing Loose RCA's....

[yoyoniner]

Hi!

I've been lurking here for a while now and used many forumers advice to purchase my system. So far, so good. Everything is installed fine and works great. Except for one MINOR problem that causes MAJOR difficulties...

...and that is an RCA female plug on the amp that has too wide of a hole, for lack of better terms. It is a JL Audio 450/4 that I bought online that the dealer will warranty and repair, but I would hate to rip out the amp and send it all the way back, to wait several weeks, just in order to replace a stupid RCA plug that I feel I could fix myself. It's just not worth sending it back.

The problem is is that, as you know with a car, hitting bumps and causing the cable to jiggle will result in dropped audio. I then have to go back in the trunk and wiggle the cable so that the audio comes back. I have tried several different cables so the problem is not the cable--it's just that the female hole is just too big so there is room for the plug to jiggle around--the cable is not snug in place.

So my question is this... do you experts have any ideas on how I can fix this? It is simply just a matter of making the male plug a little bigger so that it fits snuggly in the female connector on the amp. I doubt I can make the female hole smaller, but you never know.

My current thinking on the situation is too either 1) Find a RCA cable brand that is notorious for having a thick connector and a snug fit, or 2) Possibly put some solder on the RCA cable's male end to make it wider.

Any thoughts?

Oh yeah... forgot to mention that I did use a pliers to make the surrounding metal around the male connector more snug... so yes that made it more snug. But again, even with a snug fit, sometime the male plug seems to just not hit the internal leads, and the audio will still drop. To give you a picture, basically making the actual protruding PLUG of the male end of the RCA cable WIDER in diameter would completely solve the problem... Any ideas?

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[tplaya07 10+ year member]

If you have warranty on it, I would advise you let them do any repairs on it. I know it may be somewhat of an inconvienience, but if later on you have a problem with the amp, and they find that you've tampered with it (done yur own repair work), they may not honor any other warranty work.

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

You could get a couple short RCA extensions from Radio Shack and experiment with ways to make the RCA tip a bit fatter. That way you don't risk hosing your expensive cables.

Blobbing solder on it might work, or squeeze them with pliers and flatten em out a bit.

You could also take the amp apart and see if you can squeeze the recepticles tighter.

 

[bjfish11 5,000+ posts]

RCA's have some little crimpable flanges on the ouside of them. The part that surrounds the whole hookup. (Hope that makes sense). Just take a plier and very carefully crimp the outside of the RCA a little tighter. That should fix it. Ive done it before, so if it doenst make sense, ask and ill try to explain better.