Kicker amp goes into protective mode

[Diesel69]

I recently purchased a pair of JBL 631, kicker 46CXA360.4T amp, RCA's, the recommended 8-gauge amplifier power wiring kit from crutchfield, a Kicker CompVR 43CVR122 sub and the speaker wires 16 gauge. Everything went fine until I added the sub wired in series, bridged using 3 & 4 channels as recommended by crutchefield reps. Gains are set at 12 oclock and every since the amp has been going into protective mode. I checked the voltage on the amp before going to protective mode and it reads less than 11v. I disconnected the sub and everything went back to normal. I set the gains at 9oclock with the sub connected and it out out from protective mode. But it doesn't sound as loud as before. I've spent over $600 just to listen to music with the gains set at 9oclock? I drive a 370z. Battery is brand new and the alternator can handle a lot (150). I'm using a 16 gauge wire for the sub btw.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

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[Popwarhomie 5,000+ posts]

Do you have your subwoofer wired to 1 ohm or 4 ohms?

Also gain is not a volume knob. It should be set to match your headunits rca output voltage.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

Yeah it sounds like the sub final ohm load to the amp may be the issue.

 

[Diesel69]

delete

 

[Diesel69]

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. I wired the sub in series so it gives me 3.5 ohm aka 4ohms

Also gain is not a volume knob. It should be set to match your headunits rca output voltage.

How can I match it to my aftermarket rca output voltage?

 

[Popwarhomie 5,000+ posts]

I would double check your wiring to make 100% sure it is at 4 ohms and there are no stray wires causing a short. But that issue is normally always from too low of impedance. So if it is for sure at 4 ohms I'm not really sure what would cause it to protect.

I know the 370z has very little space for amps but a monoblock amp would be a good idea to get more power to your subwoofer.


As far as gain level. Its alittle harder since that amp doesn't have voltage levels on the gain pots. You could either use an Oscope, a DD1, or the piezo tweeter trick to set the gains.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

I would double check your wiring to make 100% sure it is at 4 ohms and there are no stray wires causing a short. But that issue is normally always from too low of impedance. So if it is for sure at 4 ohms I'm not really sure what would cause it to protect.

I know the 370z has very little space for amps but a monoblock amp would be a good idea to get more power to your subwoofer.


As far as gain level. Its alittle harder since that amp doesn't have voltage levels on the gain pots. You could either use an Oscope, a DD1, or the piezo tweeter trick to set the gains.



View attachment 25481

Is there any actual documentation or a scientific like study on using the gain as a volume knob vs voltage matching? That would be a good presentation to have.

 

[Diesel69]

I would double check your wiring to make 100% sure it is at 4 ohms and there are no stray wires causing a short. But that issue is normally always from too low of impedance. So if it is for sure at 4 ohms I'm not really sure what would cause it to protect.

I know the 370z has very little space for amps but a monoblock amp would be a good idea to get more power to your subwoofer.View attachment 25481

Exactly. If it was a stray wire, the amp would have been in protection mode since day one. This happened after I added a new subwoofer. I think my 2 weeks old kicker amp is done. Now I can't get it out from protection mode. Disconnected all wires except power, ground and remote, still in protection mode. Disconnected the battery terminals, etc. Nothing. I used a short jumper cable and connected it to the remote and power slot and it still in protection mode. Time for an exchange :/

 

[Diesel69]

I would double check your wiring to make 100% sure it is at 4 ohms and there are no stray wires causing a short. But that issue is normally always from too low of impedance. So if it is for sure at 4 ohms I'm not really sure what would cause it to protect.View attachment 25481

Surprisingly, the amp decided to get out from protected mode. All the wires were off except the power, remote and ground of course. Then I connected them one by one to see if the amp would go into protected mode and it didn't. The 2 speakers are working perfect. I don't know why the amp took hours to get out from that. The gains are set to 8o'clock. I checked the ohms and both left and right speakers read close to 4 ohms. Also, the kicker sub reads 4 ohms since it is wired in series.

I'm using this Rocketfish™ - 30' 16 Gauge CM Speaker Wire - Gold for the sub. Don't know if that even matters. Do you think it is just a defected amp?

 

[Popwarhomie 5,000+ posts]

That wire should be fine. I would try exchanging the amp myself. Kicker normally has pretty decent amps but you could have gotten a defective one.

 

[Firewalker]

Yeah it should work with 16 gauge but depending on how many watts that is is kinda small for a subwoofer wire, even in the boxes I run at least 10-12 gauge on the subwoofer and then from the amplifier I run anywhere from 8 gauge to the 10-12 gauge depending on the watts for it. 4 Channel amplifiers when running components or coaxial speakers I run 16 or 18 gauge.

 

[Diesel69]

That wire should be fine. I would try exchanging the amp myself. Kicker normally has pretty decent amps but you could have gotten a defective one.

So I was re-setting the gain controls by using a meter and set it to AC volts to the speakers output of the amp while playing the 1khz test tone. I calculated to find the voltage that i need to set the gains to and I got v=12.64. Voltage = square root of watts x ohms. My amp watts RMS is 440 and according to kicker's power chart (400W 4Ω 40.00V) so 40x4=160 and square root 12.64. So far so good but I haven't tried adding the sub yet. My amp has two gain controls. I believe the other one is for the sub for channels 3 and 4. How do you find the voltage for my kicker 2ohms compvr sub?
power handling: 150-400 watts RMS (200 watts per coil) Hopefully this is what is causing the issue.

This is the amp's specs
4-channel car amplifier

• 65 watts RMS x 4 at 4 ohms (90 watts RMS x 4 at 2 ohms)
• 180 watts RMS x 2 bridged at 4 ohms (4-ohm stable when bridged)

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

Yeah it should work with 16 gauge but depending on how many watts that is is kinda small for a subwoofer wire, even in the boxes I run at least 10-12 gauge on the subwoofer and then from the amplifier I run anywhere from 8 gauge to the 10-12 gauge depending on the watts for it. 4 Channel amplifiers when running components or coaxial speakers I run 16 or 18 gauge.

I tend to agree with this line of thinking. Absolute smallest I'd personally use on a sub is 14 gauge. I really prefer 10 gauge around 1500w, but that's just me. I've ran 8 gauge to subs before.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

So I was re-setting the gain controls by using a meter and set it to AC volts to the speakers output of the amp while playing the 1khz test tone. I calculated to find the voltage that i need to set the gains to and I got v=12.64. Voltage = square root of watts x ohms. My amp watts RMS is 440 and according to kicker's power chart (400W 4Ω 40.00V) so 40x4=160 and square root 12.64. So far so good but I haven't tried adding the sub yet. My amp has two gain controls. I believe the other one is for the sub for channels 3 and 4. How do you find the voltage for my kicker 2ohms compvr sub?
power handling: 150-400 watts RMS (200 watts per coil) Hopefully this is what is causing the issue.

This is the amp's specs
4-channel car amplifier

• 65 watts RMS x 4 at 4 ohms (90 watts RMS x 4 at 2 ohms)
• 180 watts RMS x 2 bridged at 4 ohms (4-ohm stable when bridged)

I'm not sure you can run more than 2 channels on your amp to that sub being a dual 2 ohm. It's too low of load for you amp to run all 4 channels on that sub. If you had a d4 ohm sub, you could do that.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

A dual 2 ohm sub can be wired to a single + and - that reads either 1 ohm (parallel) or 4 ohms (series).