I was wondering if anyone can help me, i have a 400 watt clarion amp and im trying to push a rockford old school series one 15" sub. I have everything wired up properly but when i turn my gain up on my amp, at a certain point, the amp goes into protection mode and cuts off all sound. Can someone tell me why this is happening and what I can do to fix it please.
So is that why the protection light kicks on? Im getting barely any bass from that setting its a very small amount.When i tried to bridge the amp and run it to my sub, the protection light kicked on right away, its like it doesnt want to push the sub, any ideas??
the amp goes into protection as a way to prevent the amp from entering clipping, which will damage the speakers. the gain, or input sensitivity dial is used strictly to match line voltage from the head unit to the input stage of the amp. It rarely needs to be more than half way up to be set properly. If the amp isn't loud enough with the gain set correctly, you need a bigger amplifier. no way around that. turning the gain up too far on underpowered amps is the leading cause of blown speakers. People try to compensate for a severe lack of power by using the gain setting as a 'volume knob' for the amp.
So then, when i try to bridge the amp, it kicks on the light. What you are saying is that i need a bigger amp than that to pish the 15"? So is there any way i can push this sub with this amp, or is it just going to keep going into protection mode??
When the amp is bridged, if it immediately enters protection mode, this may be due to the speaker presenting less than a 4 ohm load to the amp. Most amps when bridged are only 4 ohm stable due to seeing half of the actual load.
If the sub is 4 ohms, single coil, then the problem is indeed the gain setting, and yes you just need a larger amp if the output isn't enough for you. Is that old Clarion amp 400 watts RMS or peak? 400 watts RMS x 1 bridged @ 4 ohms?
Its 400 watts max power model apa-450 and the sub is an older rockford series one 15". I dont understand why i cant get it to push it, my friend told me that he got it to work just fine... Not sure about the sub, all i know is that it has two spots to hook up the speaker terminals so that must mean its a dvc?? Not too sure about all of this stuff.. Please help, ive spent two days outside in the freezin cold pissed off trying to get this thing to work..
Sounds like a DVC sub and thats the over load problem because your probably running it paralled. To use that amp for now you'll need to hook the coils in series to get 8 ohms. But that leads to the second problem. a 400 watt peak amp (4 ohm briged mono?) is under powering that big 15" speaker for sure.
Thanks for all the help on solving my problem. I just decided to borrow a friends MTX 12" bass tube for now and im in the process of shopping for a bigger amp. What size would anyone suggest for pushing a 15" rockford series one?? Maybe a 1000 or 2000?? How would i hook the coils in series fryguy.ca?? Can anyone give me some instructions on how to hook the coils in series?? thanks