I've been lurking here for a while now and used many forumers advice to purchase my system. So far, so good. Everything is installed fine and works great. Except for one MINOR problem that causes MAJOR difficulties...
...and that is an RCA female plug on the amp that has too wide of a hole, for lack of better terms. It is a JL Audio 450/4 that I bought online that the dealer will warranty and repair, but I would hate to rip out the amp and send it all the way back, to wait several weeks, just in order to replace a stupid RCA plug that I feel I could fix myself. It's just not worth sending it back.
The problem is is that, as you know with a car, hitting bumps and causing the cable to jiggle will result in dropped audio. I then have to go back in the trunk and wiggle the cable so that the audio comes back. I have tried several different cables so the problem is not the cable--it's just that the female hole is just too big so there is room for the plug to jiggle around--the cable is not snug in place.
So my question is this... do you experts have any ideas on how I can fix this? It is simply just a matter of making the male plug a little bigger so that it fits snuggly in the female connector on the amp. I doubt I can make the female hole smaller, but you never know.
My current thinking on the situation is too either 1) Find a RCA cable brand that is notorious for having a thick connector and a snug fit, or 2) Possibly put some solder on the RCA cable's male end to make it wider.
Oh yeah... forgot to mention that I did use a pliers to make the surrounding metal around the male connector more snug... so yes that made it more snug. But again, even with a snug fit, sometime the male plug seems to just not hit the internal leads, and the audio will still drop. To give you a picture, basically making the actual protruding PLUG of the male end of the RCA cable WIDER in diameter would completely solve the problem... Any ideas?
You might want to try making the pin thicker.. Or if all else fails, you could attempt to solder a male to male RCA adapter into the plug, then just plug your RCA's into the new input.
The soldering thing would be very hard though, since you'd want it plugged in snugly when doing it.. I'd really try perhaps taking something thin, (perhaps a cut needle) and wrap it in Electrical tape until it's thick enough, to wedge inside the connector, and being short enough to still let you plug in the RCA all the way.
You know what I thought of? What about the split center pin designed cables? I could just get one of those. The answer seems to be really simple--I just didn't know these split center pin designs existed.
That should do the trick, no? Supposedly they are made for a more snug fit and act almost like a spring.