System going in and out, red protect light goes on amp when bass hits

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gud

CarAudio.com Recruit
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Florida
I'm lost. Sorry for the wall of text, looking for any advice. I'll bold the important bits

hey, got a sundown SA12 subwoofer paired with a rockford fosgate r1200-d amplifier being powered by the cars stock battery. Hooked up to an aftermarket sony headunit. (xav-ax1000)

I have had this setup for a long time and never had an issue like this before:

Occasionally everything works perfectly fine. Bass hits like normal, amp is running fine, no protect light.
Other times (which is more frequent now) on heavy bass tones the protect light will turn red (from blue) for a second and the whole subwoofer will cut out and go back in. I've found the problem stops when I turn the bass down on the meter (which seems obvious but I have to turn it down to a point where you can barely hear any bass whatsoever, so its clear its something wrong). This also only happens on certain bass tones. Other bass tones hit fine like normal.

The only thing NEW new in this setup is a new sub enclosure, which I dont suspect is the cause of this

In terms of connection, everything seems really solid. I've gone over both ends multiple times and cannot any problems in terms of the connection. Using 4AWG power wire. It's all new wire, new ground, new power, even the speaker wire is new (all as of a month ago)
The subwoofer is powered from the stock car battery which is connected to a fuse. The fuse has not blown. The power cable is soldered to the terminal connector, so it's not a loose connection.
The ground coming from the amp goes to a factory grounding point in my trunk, which I have used a star washer on to dig into the metal for a more secure connection. The terminal connector piece is also soldered to the wire. I cannot imagine it could be a loose connection or a bad ground. When idling, the amplifier has a solid blue light, the bass meter never shuts off, etc. I don't believe it's a bad ground because of this.


What steps should I take to find the issue? I'm to the point where I want to take it somewhere because this is really frustrating, but I've been having trouble finding a shop that will help troubleshoot something I installed myself.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-subwoofer-in-my-car-cuts-out-at-high-volume.3099839/ this thread sounds really similar to my issue.
After reading this thread I thought maybe it could be the alternator, however when running the car for a long time without bass and then turning bass on, the issue persists.
Battery has been checked by autozone and it's supposedly in good shape.
(this car is new to me as of two months so I'm unaware when the battery was actually purchased, but the setup is the same as I've always had it in a dif car) Never had an issue powering the car on, when I turn the key it turns on quickly.
 
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Do you not have a volt meter installed? I personally recommend anyone with an amplified stereo system to have one.

Subwoofer ever gotten smelly?


Where you at in Florida?
No volt meter, though that is something I will most likely add in next. Not sure why I haven't yet. I've just been using a digital multimeter but mine just died, so I'm out of luck atm.

Sub has gotten like a little bit of a burnt smell before but that was usually in my old car (where I never had issues bumping it really hard) and usually after heavy usage / long drives. My previous enclosure was also falling apart, so I believe that had some to do with the burnt/woody smell (could see wood shavings coming off it from the sub vibrating against it). Since I've got the new enclosure I haven't smelled anything. (also this subwoofer is less than a year old, I know I said it's a few years old setup but I bought a new sub of the same model cause my last one was beat after 4/5 years of using it in the heat)

When I say i could bump it hard in my old car, I never had any issues like this at all. (at one point the cables literally fried through because the sub/amp was pushing too much power. seems like the exact opposite issue I'm having now) This car I have now I've been able to get the setup working perfect for only a few days at a time before it has issues again. I always thought it just wasnt a secure ground since it would fix when I would play around with the cable, but after soldering the cable to the connector piece and tightening with a star washer underneath, I'm almost positive the ground can't get much better

Around the ft lauderdale area
 
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small update, i grounded the amp directly to the chassis, secured with two screws instead of the factory bolt ground it was on before. the issue was still happening so i toyed with the amp settings and now it's hitting decent and the protect light doesn't come on (except for one song I found during testing) but it still don't sound completely right. gonna test with this multimeter when I can. Seems fine for the time being, still never seen this though. I've pushed the sub harder before and never had the protect light come on and cut the bass out like it's been doing

edit: same things happening again. I'm at a complete loss now. Gonna call around and see what shop is willing to help me out
 
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gud

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