Subwoofer or amp toast?

[jcraft 10+ year member]

Hi all,

Have had my system in place for years and now have a problem with sub. It is a 12" sub fed from a 2 channel bridged amp at 250watts. Speaker is rated at 300w or 400 peak. Anyways, no base sound is present. I pulled the speaker out of the enclosure and the neg. Braided wire from the terminal block that goes into speaker is burned in two. I measured res. With a meter across the two wires going into the coil and i read the correct resistance which is 4 ohms. I temporarily clamped the wires together and the speaker moves but doesnt seem to powerful. I also hooked up a regular speaker to the amp at low volume and this speaker as well moves and you here some sound. I am wondering why this wire would burn in two. Does this mean the amp could be bad or do you think the speaker is bad. I can tell you my son drives the car and the amp gain was all the way up and it is usually at half. I am wondering if it just blew the speaker. Whats throwing it off is still reading 4 ohms across coil. Thx

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[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

Clipping.heat will kill a speaker. Also....doesn't sound like the gain was set properly since you said the gain was all the way up.

 

[BOOMINGRANDPA 5,000+ posts]

Hi all,
Have had my system in place for years and now have a problem with sub. It is a 12" sub fed from a 2 channel bridged amp at 250watts. Speaker is rated at 300w or 400 peak. Anyways, no base sound is present. I pulled the speaker out of the enclosure and the neg. Braided wire from the terminal block that goes into speaker is burned in two. I measured res. With a meter across the two wires going into the coil and i read the correct resistance which is 4 ohms. I temporarily clamped the wires together and the speaker moves but doesnt seem to powerful. I also hooked up a regular speaker to the amp at low volume and this speaker as well moves and you here some sound. I am wondering why this wire would burn in two. Does this mean the amp could be bad or do you think the speaker is bad. I can tell you my son drives the car and the amp gain was all the way up and it is usually at half. I am wondering if it just blew the speaker. Whats throwing it off is still reading 4 ohms across coil. Thx

yep kids shouldn't touch amps.. he turned gain up to make sub louder which sent clipped (distorted) signal fried sub.. to prevent that get bigger mono amp better sub so u can run 750-1k rms to the sub (ported box) and maybe he'll leave gain alone if it's loud enough.. or don't let kids drive your car which is what i do..