Internal Bridging

[Corkren23]

I am new to car audio and i was wondering if there are amps with internal bridging. I have receently purchased an 8 ohm jl 12w1v2 (SVC) and i was told to purchase a bridged 4 ohm amp that is around 400 watts. Is this true? if so what amps would be reccomended? Any help would be apperciated.

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[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

There's no such thing as "internal bridging." What they mean by "bridging" is when they use both the left and right channel of a stereo amplifier to power one speaker. Mono subwoofer amps don't have the capability to "bridge" because it doesn't need to - it only has one channel. To "bridge" an amplifier that can be bridged all you have to do is look at the speaker terminals and they'll tell you where to hook the wires up to, 90% of the time that's all you have to do but there might be a switch on the amp that you have to engage, and if so they'll be next to all the other controls.

Not all amplifiers can be bridged. For example many home audio amplifiers/receivers will break if you try to do that, because they aren't designed to do so.

In your situation you can't really use a mono subwoofer amp because most mono subwoofer amps don't make a whole lot of power at 8 ohms, so you'll need a good old fashioned stereo amplifier that is stable to 4 ohms bridged, they'll also have a spec that lists stereo power output into 2 ohms stereo. When you "bridge" a stereo amplifier the impedance that the amp sees drops in half, so in your case the amp will make about half the power to your 8 ohm subwoofer when you bridge it, because it is 8 ohm and not 4 ohm.

Here's a nice and inexpensive 600 watt amp that you can use

CADENCE 600w RMS 2 CHANNEL COMPETITION CAR AMPLIFIER - eBay (item 350357291121 end time May-28-10 14:34:44 PDT)

Remember your 8 ohm subwoofer will only get around 300 watts because it's 8 ohm, but that'll give you room to upgrade should you want to add another subwoofer of the same type.

 

[Databyter 10+ year member]

I think what is meant by internal bridging is that many multi-channel amps have the internal circuitry to provide a combined signal by connecting for instance the negative the left channel and the positive of the other. Inernal circuitry insures you are getting data and power from both channels combined into one.

Hence, Internal Bridging.

 

[Databyter 10+ year member]

I think what is meant by internal bridging is that many multi-channel amps have the internal circuitry to provide a combined signal by connecting (for example) the negative lead of the left channel and the positive of the right channel. Internal circuitry insures you are getting data and power from both channels combined into one, and phased and balanced correctly.

Hence, Internal Bridging.