What does an LED do on AC Voltage?

[amartin_72]

I was messing around and i hooked up some 12v light bulbs to the terminals on my amp and it beat to the music. I know these bulbs are meant for DC but it played all night and didnt burn out. It looks really sweet and i wanted to take the 4 channels of power that im not using on my deck to power a light setup in my truck that beats to the music. I would need HPF on all of the channels though-i would just make my own little crossovers with inductors from radio shack. I was hoping i could use LED's like these

And put them inside my amps that I will be poutting plexi glass on in my amp rack. THe amps will be mounted with the internals showing and i thoguth this would look pretty cool if it beat to the music.

Click to read more...

 

[joetama 5,000+ posts]

Well if a LED still works like a diode, which I am pretty sure it does, then it will let current flow one direction back to the output on the amp, which is bad. It would be like shorting half of the cycle of the output. Now if they are regular bulbs that is a different story, however regular bulbs have a wide range of operating ohmage which would not be good... BTW this is all if you are running them in parallel, if you run them in series it is a different story, but pretty much that you are still only getting half the cycle of current or you are lowering your output a lot....

 

[djman37 5,000+ posts]

http://www.gibsonteched.com/colororgan.html

there oughta be an LED version somewhere in there.

i used to have a site that had ALL KINDS of kits.

 

[jrz126 10+ year member]

You'll want a color organ/sound to light thingy if you want it to light up with the music.

 

[amartin_72]

Maybe I could just use standard 12v bulbs, I was using a 120v bulb and it worked with the lights off it looked alright but not very bright. I dont want to use another device i know theres a way to make this work.

If my deck is 20x4 @ 4 ohms thats 9v on each channel with 2 10watt bulbs per channel

I plan on wiring 6 of the lights into a low pass filter and then into the amp rack with the sub amp and the other channel into a high pass filter into two lights in the front stage amp. I will post pics of my box that this is going into when i sand it down some more and add a layer of spray on bedliner.

 

[joetama 5,000+ posts]

Maybe I could just use standard 12v bulbs, I was using a 120v bulb and it worked with the lights off it looked alright but not very bright. I dont want to use another device i know theres a way to make this work.
If my deck is 20x4 @ 4 ohms thats 9v on each channel with 2 10watt bulbs per channel, and if i wire the rear channel lights to the sub amp and wire the front channel lights to the front stage amp it should be neat to see each amp light up depending on its use.

It would not be good to run anything but a speaker off of the output of your amp, unless it is designed for that....

 

[amartin_72]

Well it worked all night long and the deck wasnt even warm.

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

why'd you even bother making a post then? just do it if you don't give a shit about your equipment or what anyone else tries to tell you

 

[elementxero 10+ year member]

lol @ ^^^

Sounds like he's running it off his deck not his amp..... As long as the output to the RCAs is in tact who cares? It would be no more output drop than if he had his rearfill running off deck power like many of you do...?

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

Yes, you can do it with LED's. And it won't hurt anything if you do it right. But you need resistors in series with the LED's to limit their current, and regular diodes in reverse direction across them to keep them from burning out on the negative part of the cycle. The value of resistor you use should limit current to about 20ma at the highest voltage you expect to see. If you dunno what I'm talking about then use some of those tiny "grain of wheat" 12V bulbs that Radio Shack sells. Regular 12V taillight bulbs would be too much of a strain on the HU.

 

[amartin_72]

Thanks,t hats what i was thinking too. As long is it is blocked in both directions it will workout just fine, although eachone will flash at ad ifferent time.

 

[knukonceptz 10+ year member]

JVC made a sub that flashed with the music, they attached the light source straight off the coil under the dustcap - surely this is the same thing