hello I have once again destoryed another subwoofer first 2 were stock with no modifications done 3rd was an infinity basslink II went dead no sound from speaker no blown fuse and lights illuminated indicating power. could not replace on warrentee due to i bought it cheap. now my rockfordfosgate PL2-112 prealoaded enclosure with a SVC stage 2 12 is dead no sound or subflexing. I plan to send it in but i want help determining if its just bad luck or there is something else demolishing my subs

my latest set up has a p200-2 RF amp that acording to the spec does not have the capability of reaching max RMS of the speaker let alone Peak power I bought it like this for the reason I thought it would lessen chances of blown speaker. plus the amps factory settings were never changed the amp puts out power when the bass is supposed to hit and quickly fades i assume that is what its supposed to do . however resistance readings accross the posts gives me and open reading. (shouldnt i get the 4 ohms of the VC?)

I have not opened the enclosure to look at the sub it self i have yet to find out if it will void wareentee. I spent 2.5 weeks breaking in the sub before turning up the vol I have 4 guage speaker wire and i think the amp wiring kit is 8 guage and im using a loc with stock sub just slowing my car down with its weight

 

The P2L-112 is a Dual Voice Coil, not a Single Voice Coil. It runs at 2 ohms per voice coil. Depending on how you run it, you can get 1 ohm or 4 ohm. With Subs and sub amp (which you dont have) you want 1 ohm. I am assuming you ran your amp bridged with the plus going into the plus and neg. going into the neg.? Need specifics to figure it out.

Main reasons you blow your sub, either pushing too much wattage (which you havent), voice coils out of sync, causing them to collide with each other.

 

correct me if i a am wrong but if the sub was DVC it would have 2 neg and 2 pos inputs for each coil not 1 neg and 1 pos plus the manual and crutchfeild both say single. yes amp is bridged which crutchfield list as 200watts rms but an independant company rated at 275 max rms for the sub is 400 watts i am not sure of the peak. off the top of my head.

 

what are the amp gains set at?

why do you have 4g speaker wire and 8g power wire? doesnt matter in this situation but its a little confusing. does the amp go into protection? or is it just the sub that is going out on you?

you can actually damage a speaker by under powering them, and its distorts like hell. im not familiar witht the sub and amp you are talking about but if you can get me the specs i could help you. we dont carry that sub here.

 

Not necessarily, within the box, the output will only have one neg. and one pos. I was rereading the main post, and you said two of your subs without any mods were blown (does that mean your stocks subs were blown?) If so then you got a problem in wiring or your Sub Amp. Run your signal wires before the sub Amp (located on the left fender in the trunk). Only reason it may be blowing all your subs is because of the stock amp then.

like said earlier, the 4 guage speaker wire is too Big, the 8 gauge wire will work considering you just running a 200 watt amp. There should be three lights on your amp, Power, Peak, and a warning light, which ones are on?

 

yep, need more specs.

if you have fluctuations in the power source (bad amp / stock battery), you can blow speakers with a spike in the flow... I would start with a Yellow Top Battery and a Good Amp.

What kind of music do you mostly listen to? Speakers/Amp depend on that also

 

Could also be that your amp is running at 4 ohms, and your sub is running at either 4 ohm (ran in series) or 1 Ohm (ran in parallel, Most likely if it was premounted). That will blow your sub too, But considering your two stock subs were screwed, your infinity basslink (which should have premounted amp) there may be something going on with the stock amp.

 

best thing to do is to have somone look at it. this could go on forever...

 

the sub

http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Produ...3&tp=112&avf=N

I have the previous model but specs remain the same

the amp
http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Produ...3&tp=115&avf=N

to answer some questions
The only light i have ever *Seen* on is the power indicator light.

I never adusted anything on the AMP i did use the puch amp remote to adjust bass boost for some songs. so enerything remained at midrange

yes stock 1 stock sub blew and one started to blow when i desided to upgrade my bass.

the stock hud controls have the sub at -5 or -6 the one above off so the stock amp *shouldnt be sending THAT much power to the sub should it?

8 guage power wires were used for basslink since that is what was recommended by many crutchfield also has 8 power and ground listed as remomended size.

if my battery was the problem wouldnt the fuse in the line comming from the battery take care of any surges

I listen to mostly hip-hop and r&b but some occasional rock rob zombie linkon park and what ever catagory nickleback is in

if I had a place to take it to i would and all the people i know and have talked to about it are as baffeled as me.

Rockford emailed me back a short while ago and said that taking the sub out to check wiring inside the box would not void the warentee so i will be doing that tomarrow sometime.

 

everything is physically in tack on the inside of the box

what would i need to take the signal from the radio directly? I know stock radios dont exactly use rca jacks. would i have to do more cutting of factory wires? how much of dismantaling the car is needed? (I was not able to remove back seat so if its more complicated/difficult then i prob wont be able to)

 

r you using a line output converter?

 

yes do you think it could cause issues? its basically just a step-down tranformer if it were to go bad it would be perm bad it only has a couple of pots some resisters and 2 txformers I looked inside it while t-shooting nothing seemed out of order I didnt take any measurements

 

just making sure you didnt rig somn up with rca's that ive seen people do.

was this amp powering the factory sub?

did the sub play at all or did it just blow after a few days?

the only thing i can think, is that you like yours loud and i think you might be pushing the limits. the p2 thats in that box is a pretty tough speaker but, not really tough enough for running hard all the time.

do you have the speaker bridged?

this is really hard to troubleshoot. with out checking the adjustments on the amp. or hearing if the speaker is hitting its F3 point, or where its bottoming out. you can blow a sub from under-powering it.

if you can please read off the adjustments on the amp.

gain? frequency? sensitivity?

 

no i didnt hook this amp to factory subs

I got the sub installed it leaving factory amp at factory settings. listend to it for about 3 weeks never exceeding 20 to break it in as reccomended by several people including tech at crutchfield. then listened to it freely for about 2 or 3 months. so it was fine and great for a good while.

yes i do like my music loud the way i drive is strange in that i pay so much attention to the road i can get highway hypnosis but listening to music prevents me from zoneing out but still pay enough attention to drive safe. without music i try to hard to drive and over think it.

i will look at amp and see it says the measurements.

It shouldnt be underpowered sub rated for 200rms/400maxrms amp rated at 257 bridged

I think i am going to try something maybe if i can find a 4 ohm load and an o-scope and rig it to the amp and crank it the music to the way i listen i can get to see exactly what my signal my sub was recieving. i just dont have the equipment needed for that.

well crutchfiled says i can turn box and sub in to them for a credit( they dont have any at this time)

or i can call the number RF gave me to see what kind of repair option they will give me

but i want to prevent it from happening again

 

hold on a sec.... are u using a LOC?? Whats the load set to on the sub? how are u wiring the sub output cables at the LOC if u are using one?

 

yes using loc the loc is a 2 channel so i have the 2 neg to the stock sub wire neg and the 2 pos to the stock pos so i have one neg rca to the neg input on on the amp and the pos to pos input on amp. The Sub that comes in the enclosure in not the normal stage 2 rockford sub but a single voice coild version which is 4 ohms

 

ok this is how u correct ur problem.... disconnect the sub cables from the LOC.... now pick a side which u want to use for the sub outputs to be plugged into...doesnt matter which side its the same either way. then at the RCA output end of the LOC that corresponds to the channel u just picked to connect..... connect a Y Splitter (should be 1male 2 female)...unless u have a 1 channel amp and u dont use a splitter. what happens with a loc is that it converts wattage to voltage and when u split the wattage to 2 channels thats really meant to be one; frequencies change slightly and dont get combined correctly at the other end... the voltage that comes out of the LOC should be almost 10V with the sub turned all the way up and thats y u split the rca lines instead. The amp is made to handle that voltage.

 

i dont understand either one of you, so im gonna tell you how to hook it up and if its different then, thats your problem....

with your loc you have 6 wires coming out the end and that also depends on what brand you have. there is usually 2 positives (no stripe) and 2 negetives (striped) and sometimes 2 brown for grounding if needed, but you dont need those if you have them... in your case since your tapping into on channel. you need to connect the 2 positive and 2 negetives together, and just tape the others to the unit if you like. so you now have the 2 positive and 2 negetives together, you now connect those to the positive and the negetive to the OUTPUT of the amp - the wires that are conecting to your factory sub. polarity is very important in that step. now your rca's are connected to the loc and then into your amp. theres no way to mess that up...since your amp turns on im guessing you dont need help with that part. soooo.....

now since you have a 12'' sub, look at your frequency adjustment knob... set that to around 80hz. this allows only certain frequencies to your sub, you do NOT want anything really above 100hz, so keep it on 80hz..... if it has a filter adjustment.... usually says.. off, low, high- pass.... turn that to lowpass. now.... turn your gains and sensitivity all the way DOWN. close your trunk and all your doors, and turn your radio on and turn it all the way up to where you prefer, but listen for distortion. if it becomes distorted, turn it down. i would recomend turning your bass down on the radio a little. now go back to your amp and turn the gain up to your likeing or if it becomes distorted. now alot times the sub will play buuut can be out of phase with the rest of the car. usually resulting in a muddy sound, thats not as resonsive to the music, if so try and swithing the positive and negetive at the actually sub box.

i have a feeling that you are pushing the subs to there limit and there blowing. i think you have your connection right. if your trying to blow your doors off, your not gonna get that outta just 1 p2. let me know what happens or if i need to go into more details. good luck.

 

I THINK I have solved the issue!

I bought 2 old school MTX thunder 6000 off a friend for 50 bucks they were brand new he never hooked them up. (250-500 rms)

I put one in the RF box and took a look at everything once again. ice2fire11 my loc is wired exactly as you described but I overlooked something my loc not only has switches to select input and output types it has two POTs for further adjustment now that i have a working sub I adjusted thoses POTs to the point where the sub was not getting enough signal to funtion then increased it just enough that the sub functions the MTX does not sound as good as the RF sub BUT the box was desined for the sub it came with, not to mention it not exactly a perfect fit... but i just got the MTX in there so i can have something untill i get my new RF sub
Once I get my new RF sub I will be able to adjust the loc better and I figure the sub lasted for months with the loc allowing the most for rca output I should be able to have some good bass with something more midrange

 

I'm a bass guy... I play electric bass in a couple of rock bands and do live sound.

I think the problem is that your amp is not powerful *enough*. I see this all the time in live sound applications. The deal is that when the amp isn't powerful enough, it clips when it reaches its top rated power, meaning it essentially sends DC straight to your speaker. This will destroy a speaker in an instant by essentially melting the voice coil. Bass in particular takes a tremendous amount of power, so buying a less powerful power amp will actually cause your speakers to blow more easily because it can't put out the big spikes that come with bass (like the bass drum, for example) without clipping. So the less power you have for your sub amp, the more you'll melt your speakers.

What you want to do is get an amp that has lots of headroom to put out big bass spikes without clipping. If you have a good quality sub speaker, it'll take the spikes just fine and won't melt because the amp won't be at the limits of its output power and thus won't be clipping.

Generally in my live sound setup (this is NOT in my TL, BTW!) I mate a 1500 watt RMS power amp to speakers that are only rated for about 500 watt RMS--the speakers can take a spike up to twice that. I could probably blow the speakers with the full 1500 watts, but I never drive the amp to its full capacity--that's the headroom I need. I'm not suggesting you get an amp that powerful for the TL, BTW--I just use that as an example of where I mate an amp with a lot more power than the speakers are rated for.

My suggestion would be to try a MORE powerful amp with a good quality sub and see how that works.


Just my .02.

 

why do people repeat what others say.....

 

thats what i mentioned earlier about under powering a sub and distorting the signal....glad to see youve figured it out. just tune it like i said, you want as much input power to the amp - from the converter- buuut not too much, - creating distortion - if that makes sense. it all depends on the amp....

good luck with keeping the new sub working....

 

Just to update this thread (I hate unresolved threads)

I have gotten a replacement sub from Rockford a stage 2 DVC which i wired in series so its 4 ohm (amp is not rated for lower) and the replacement sub is much larger magnet and has higer power handling in all aspecs. Replacement sub is a beast.

New punch is all broken in and I got every thing adjusted so that with my remote bass boost all the way down I can listen to the most bass heavy music i have with the volume at 35 and i have no distortion listenin at the sub. I can then simply adjust my bass boost remote for not so heavy bass songs so i get the bass i need.

Now on to my components I know getting that rear deck is going to be a PITA...


semi off topic

I just read 2 interesting threads with info on the stock amp and that it distorts and clips and genernally gives very bad signal at volumes 36-40 while being clean at 35 I used to ride at 40 all the time which was probly my main issue on why i was blowing stock speakers. so now I know and Knowing is half the battle!

 

35 is nominal i wouldnt go higher in volume on the radio....and yes the stock amp is a pos....lol good work bro glad its working