Smoking Amp - Dead, but why?

[WarPigsBravoCo]

I could see the ground that's connected under and to the passenger seat maybe came just loose enough. So when testing yeah everything could work without notice of the loose ground. But when all done and re-connecting the wire to the battery, pop! That's one thing to re-check even though it's up in smoke. Sorry to hear bro.

Thanks. Checked ground and it’s tight. My guess is something inside the unit wiggled loose and fell across something conducting electricity. The unit was powered probably less than 15 minutes in total (set up and then with speakers attached). Radio dial goes up to 35 and it was never turned up over 23 during that 15 minutes. I’ll return it and then look at a Pioneer or Kenwood amp.

 

[WarPigsBravoCo]

Cheap chinese amp with a high failure rate.

Soundstream amps are pretty much all junk these days.

Unfortunately, I believe that to bet the case. The unit had good reviews and scored well on the RMS rating tests I watched on YouTube. I’ll move on to Pioneer or Kenwood as a replacement.

 

[billyg]

I've had some good installs with some different Kenwood amp's and they always seem to be close to what they say they put out, also not power hungry. Be glad it actually crapped out in time so you can return it and not down the road (still sucks).