I just received my amp and hooked it up with the remote turn on coming from the cigarette lighter wire. I checked and there is both current coming from the battery and from the remote turn on wire. I also know that I have a proper ground cause I used that to test that I had a complete circuit with the main power line and remote turn on. Does anyone have any ideas what is wrong. I have a JL 500/1 amp.

 

Are there fuses in the amp that could be blown?

 

The manual says that JL amps are unique in that they do not have fuses in them.

 

defective amp? return to store?

 

take it to professional and let them deal with it

 

off-topic: nice avatar jiggaman!

 

fixed it my ground wire was too long

 

 

the ground wire for some reason is only allowed to be 3 feet long as stated in the manual which i missed. my ground wire was like 5ft long when i moved the ground point and shorted the ground wire it worked.

 

it must have just been a bad contact somewhere because I find it hard to believe the amp would know if a wire is 5' long or 3' long. It's not like the resistance of the ground would increase that much over 2'.

 

well we tride a 3 foot ground on the same contact and it worked. the jl 500/1 amp manual states you can only use a 3ft ground and it means it.

 

I believe that you got it working, I'd just like it if someone could explain why that worked.

 

I agree with Dan, I find it hard to believe simply changing from 5ft wire to 3ft wire would make the amp turn on. It's not physically impossible, it just seems highly unlikely for a car amp.

I just skimmed through the manual and they say 3ft under the "typical installation sequence" which is fine as a general guideline. In fact, it reads like IASCA guidelines form years ago. Common practice has always been to make your grounds as short as possible.

But if you read down into troubleshooting area it says something like "my amp won't turn on" and one of the issues is the remote turn on switch. Maybe that switch was set on signal sensing? Since you said "we" at one point maybe someone else was playing with the switch?