Need help choosing an amp for my sub

[diablo_bt]

Hi there, I was recently given a Lightning Audio "The Fast and the Furious" 10" 500W 4ohms sub and would like to hook it up to the stereo in my car. I have a Lanzar VBD1400 Vibe series head-unit, but I have no idea what sort of amp to buy and use to hook my sub up to this. What do you guys recommend?

Thanks in advance!

diablo_bt

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[TxIceMan 10+ year member]

Find a 500-600W RMS @ 4ohms Mono (1-Channel) Amp. A good place to research would be http://www.Crutchfield.com. Equipment is generally more expensive there than other places online and sometimes local but their support is second to none.

 

[Prowler573 5,000+ posts]

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wave.gif.002382ce7d7c19757ab945cc69819de1.gif Hello over there in Oceania. Auckland is somewhere I've always wanted to visit.

1st off I do not think that particular sub is rated for 500w RMS but rather 500w PEAK or MAX input which is a rather immaterial rating all things considered.

I've been looking but everywhere thus far won't give me the RMS rating for that sub so I'll guesstimate it is likely around 250-300 watts.

You'll want an amp that will give you the above-stated wattage range @ 4 Ohms. This can be accomplished a couple of different ways. Either a monoblock amp that does .25kW @ 4 Ohms or a two-channel amp that will do 250w or so when mono bridged. (the two channels combined to make a single, mono output channel).

Were you stateside there are tons of options available cheap that would fit the bill nicely. With you being in NZ, however, I just don't know what's available to you. I would imagine, though, you'll likely be able to source something there fairly inexpensively to suit your needs.

Edit:

I just had a look at ebay.nz and did a quick search in the car amplifiers section and found zero products. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif

That's the problem you encounter when you're looking at an eBay venue that has far fewer traders than we're accustomed to stateside. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

 

[diablo_bt]

Thanks for your help guys.

Something I don't understand is the ohm ratings though, but from looking at the specs on a few amps already I'm guessing that the actual output wattage of an amp will vary depending on how many ohms the sub is? Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

Anyway, it looks like I'll just search around for an amp which will be able to output about 300W or so, because I'm not entirely sure what the RMS rating of this sub is either, it just has "500W Maximum Power Handling" printed on the back.

If I were to purchase a 2-channel amp and were to bridge the two channels to make it mono, is it just as simple as taking the wires from both channels and splicing them together?

And as for not being able to find any results on the NZ eBay, that's most likely because most New Zealanders don't seem to use eBay much and instead we all strangely seem to use a site named Trademe (trademe.co.nz) //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif