Bass issue solved:
Sub was blown and for some reason the iphone was muted when rca's were plugged up.
If you connect your iphone to a pioneer deck don't forget to turn back up your volume before you ever turn on usb/bt. The iphone does not automatically turn back up the iphone audio when you plug it into your headunit. Once you plug in a usb or switch to any other device with your iphone usb'd you lose the ability to adjust the actual iphone volume beforehand.
If I set my iphone at 25% of its volume, then plug it in via usb it will play that sub at the 25% volume. Never going up to 100%. I also lose all ability to control the iphone internal volume the second the usb is plugged in or bluetooth is synced.
So always check the iphone internal volume beforehand. The pioneer headunit does not crank it up automatically when its plugged in via usb or bt. It stays at what it was set at before plugging in. Now whats funny is the phone volume will show 100% when I look at it thru the phone with usb connected or bluetooth connected, but the bass going out of the music will be the hidden iphone setting at the min 25% since I never increased it before switching to bt or plugging in the usb.
If you have pioneer headunit I would definately keep this in mind, because it matters that you only get the volume your phone was set at before you plugged in the usb.
Try this turn down the ringer on your iphone to 0 disconnected from the usb
plug in the iphone via usb, now look at the volume on your iphone with usb connected it will say 100%
(LIES)
You'll notice that your actual bass coming out of the iphone will be locked at 0%
Even increasing the volume control on your headunit will not fix this. The unit thinks you only want the iphone to play at 0%.
You would think that the headunit would automatically max out the usb/bt device volume when it gets plugged in since you are riding in a car and listening to music, but it doesn't. This is where my hiccup was I thought the phone automatically increased to the appropriate volume when I hooked it up. I never thought to check the internal iphone volume before connecting the device, because the iphone showed 100% volume when connected via usb, but the output was still at 0% of bass.
The only way to adjust this is to unplug the iphone via usb, then up the volume and then hook it back up to the usb.
Once bluetooth sync's you cannot change the phones internal volume. You have to turn the car completely off and set the iphone volume then restart the car. Switching to radio and trying to up the iphone internal volume won't help. The car must be off when doing this to correct the issue using bluetooth.
Bingo now your bass hits again. The culprit was nothing more, then a internal iphone volume setting that was hidden away once synced or connected.
Moving on...
Had a full bench test done on amp - its fine
Bought a new sub - works great
P-Con blue remote had come loose and was causing a short while driving. This is why the amp randomly would turn on and off.
SLA had reset itself down to 0 so it was like there was no bass coming thru the system.
Bass was completely missing with a pioneer headunit until SLA was back to 4
Added a 2 ohm rockford shallow P3 to my setup - Hits alot harder than my memphis did.
The pioneer I bought wouldn't fit in the box because there is a wedge mid center making it impossible to fit.
Unfortunately
amazon doesn't allow a return on it so now I have a pioneer TS-SW3002S4 for sell. Its brand spanking new NEVER used for $80.00.
Back to the troubleshooting...
After all the troubleshooting headache I went thru the only thing that mattered was putting a single SLA 0 back to 4 and setting my iphones internal volume before connecting via usb or syncing bluetooth. Now it hits again the way it should with no bass boost whatsoever. With SLA at 0 the bass is so horrible it makes all the money I spent on my system extremely disappointing. I want that thump! SLA 4 brings that thump back. At SLA 0 the bass is so minimal that you can barely feel anything at all. I mean anything, its such disappointing bass even at 40v (400 RMS)
If you have a pioneer deck and you are experiencing very little bass check the SLA and the phones actual volume before ever syncing or plugging in I cannot stress this enough. I wasted hours trying to solve a poor bass issue because I thought the headunit knew to max out any connected or synced device volume as soon as it gets plugged up.
My phone ringer was on 0 because I turn it off when I goto work. I never thought the headunit would leave it at 0 when I plug it up to listen to my stereo.
Why would I want a iphone to sync at 0% or 25% I could turn the device up or down using the volume control of the headunit once the device is synced at max level if the headunit automatically maxed all devices internal volumes. Is it wrong to assume that the headunit should have automatically done this as soon as I connected the device or synced it.
Even the phone showed 100% on volume, but it was actually still at 0%
Sorry for repeating this over and over, but I really wanted to stress the point of the iphones internal volume beforehand to help others who may be having the same issue. Hopefully this can help them solve a low bass issue with a pioneer deck.
Many times we adjust our phone volumes while doing things, but we never think to re-adjust it again before we connect it to the headunit. This is because we assume the headunit knows to put the devices volume at 100 on any new connected device as soon as its connected or synced. The iphone will trick you by showing 100 when its connected or synced, but its only going to use the volume setting before it was connected or synced in.