Is ok to crank the gains

[musclehead 10+ year member]

when you feeding the sub half of its rms. i have a jbl 1200 to an hc. im running it at 4 ohms until i upgrade my electrical. i dont want the amp to clip. will it put stress on the amp at 4 ohms full power even though its 1 ohm stable. i was thinking about keeping all the bass boost crap off and just crank the gains since im running the amp at only 4 ohms.

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[MikeofTulsa Moderator]

regardless of what ohm the amp see's dont crank the gains......

 

[Bavarian3 10+ year member]

hmmm ive been doing that with my JBL 1200.1. got it running at 4 ohms to my SE's. cranked my gains up quite a bit not too bad tho.

 

[ws140 10+ year member]

That is how alot of people mess up their subs. They have an amp that puts out alot less than the subs rms and trun the gain all the way up, sending a cipped signal. Why not just try it at 1 ohm? Then even if your alternator goes in a year or something you would be getting a new HO one.

 

[Gauntlet 5,000+ posts]

Gains are there for a purpose, and they are supposed to be set correctly regardless of the sub and it's RMS. If you crank it up, you're making the setup worse, rather than better.

 

[DaBaller504 10+ year member]

Don't crank your gains, you will have a good chance of blowing your sub or putting your amp into protection. You will get clipping from your amp and notice a lot of distortion. Wherever the gains sound good, turn down a little bit from that to be safe.

 

[Bavarian3 10+ year member]

after reading ur guys advice i just re-tuned my system a little bit ago and it sounds soo mcuh better. The bass flows throught the car alot cleaner/better. my gains are about half way up now. only thing i wasnt sure about is how high my input level should be. i have it up almost all the way....

 

[Wonderbread 5,000+ posts]

your input level IS your gain...

 

[B&R Innovation2 10+ year member]

Arg explained this sooo many times.

Your headunit sends out a certain RMS voltage through the preouts.

The amp gains are made to match the voltage you set it.

So in a perfect world a headunit sending 2.5v out should have an amp set to about 2.5v sensitivty.

In general people will turn it up farther than that and it doesnt cause a problem.

The best way to set gains is turn you radio up to just about as loud as you'd listen to it.

Turn your gains up slowly till you can hear a bit of audiable distortion...then back them down a bit

 

[musclehead 10+ year member]

thank you for your opinions. i understand amplifier clipping and all. im going to wire it to one ohm.

 

[DaBaller504 10+ year member]

also when setting your gains, make sure on your HU that your bass, treble, mids, are turned to 0, and if you have frequ's on it flat line it, turn your volume up almost the entire way and then tune your amp

 

[DaBaller504 10+ year member]

Really, I've always flat lined it, but now that I think about it it would be smarter to do it that way. I'll have to do it that way and see how it goes.

 

[iwantmorebass 10+ year member]

Originally posted by ws140 That is how alot of people mess up their subs. They have an amp that puts out alot less than the subs rms and trun the gain all the way up, sending a cipped signal. Why not just try it at 1 ohm? Then even if your alternator goes in a year or something you would be getting a new HO one.

it wouldn't last that long. thats what happened to my alt except i was using a smaller amp. then your stuck without a car for a while, at least until you get another alt

 

[Miller 10+ year member]

I understand what you guys are talking about with not cranking your gains and all, but I HAVE to on my amp. It's an eclipse 2x200 @ 2ohms (Check sig). If I even turn my gains 75% of the way up, then my subs will BARELY even hit. In order to make my subs hit decent SPL I have to turn the Gains all the way up. I figure since my amp is pretty nice and has so many safety stuff that it can handle it. It also doesnt have bass boost, so that might be a mitagating factor. But like I said before, my gains MUST be all the way up in order to have my subs even hit. (2 10" Alpine Type-R's, sealed box)

 

[MikeofTulsa Moderator]

well your subs are not designed for spl....they are strictly a sq sub....which dont get as loud.....and if u dont wanna listen to us and run your gains all the way up then do it....its your choice......but jus know u run the risk of ruining your subs.....