Ground loop from hell!?. . bad luck or explanation?

[alerotdx 10+ year member]

. . okay, so two times now have i had to replace my deck because the grounding within the deck keeps getting screwed up, at least thats what i beleive it to be. brand new pioneer deck, hasnt been in there but three months, one month it wasnt even used. is there any explanation as to why my car keeps blowing up my decks?. . . the first one i thought may have been due to vibrations from an 8" woofer located under it. so after replacing it i disconected the 8 and had my 12" DMX going for like a week, since that first week it has been all top end playing and then nothing for this last month. so tonight i get all my new stuff (15" DMX 2 new kinetik batteries 2 runs of 0 gauge etc.) and i hook it all up and what do u know my ground loop is back. ran RCAs outside the car, tested powers and regrounded all amps, regrounded front battery, checked all conections, took out the deck and hooked up an ipod thru the RCAs and the loop was gone. . so going to get a new deck tomorow. do i just have bad luck or is there an explanation to my decks getting fried?. . .

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[thegreatestpenn 5,000+ posts]

its the decks. ground the RCA's, there's a tutorial on it somewhere around here do a search

 

[DidUHearThat? 10+ year member]

Fawking pioneers.

 

[alerotdx 10+ year member]

ya i heard u can soder wire onto the metal tips of the RCAs and then ground them out, it has do be the grounding within the deck i assume bc even the channels i werent using didnt work properly

 

[alerotdx 10+ year member]

is there something that causes it to go out that im not aware of tho? . . its a brand new deck, happend 2 times now and would like to put a stop to it.

 

[thegreatestpenn 5,000+ posts]

u don't even need to solder wire on, just wrap speaker wire around all the rca's and ground that wire to the chassis. Again, check for the tutorial, maybe in the headunit section

 

[alerotdx 10+ year member]

Fawking pioneers.

ha i know there not the best, but its a premeir model. . . one of there upper decks.

 

[shaneb 10+ year member]

it's a pico fuse issue...pioneer doesn't love their customers

 

[TnT_Sounds 10+ year member]

Fawking pioneers.

x2..

There's a tutorial to follow on here on how to ground them out. IIRC I think its only in regards to Pioneer decks.

 

[DidUHearThat? 10+ year member]

No. It's a design flaw among the pioneers. They call it a "pico fuse". For some bizzare reason pioneer designers decided to put tiny fuses on the grounds of the RCA outputs. So if you plug or unplug the RCA's when the head unit is powered on, the fuses pop and forever after cause a ground loop issue resulting in engine whine noise. The fuses cannot be replaced by the user, and you have to send it in to the warranty repair or pay if it's out of warranty. Stupid. There is no reason for it. Only pioneer does this. It has caused problems of thousands of users, and they won't fix it. Yet people keep buying thier stupidly designed radios.

Fawking pioneers.

 

[JBGabriel 10+ year member]

You can fix it easily though. Just ground out the rcas to the chasis of the headunit. Done deal.