sub amps keeps overheating

Discussion in 'General Car Audio Discussions' started by ANDYK, Jun 16, 2008.

  1. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    my radio has 4v preouts...isn't that pretty good? What voltage are line drivers? Also, who makes a good line driver and where to buy?
     
  2. pedro quiroga

    pedro quiroga Well-Known Member

    8 plus volts is good,and yes you amp will take it. i had a phoenix gold amp with a PG eq/ line driver giving the sub amp 8 volts and my amp only went up to 2v. real old amp when radio's only have 1-2v out.

    you can try e-bay. 50 is the average cost. while your looking get one with at least 6 ch out for room to upgrade.

    now i should mention this may not fix your problem if your amp is damaged in some way, but if its fine then this can help.
     
  3. electrolytic

    electrolytic Full Member

    do you have SLA adjustment on that alpine? Maybe you noticed it in the settings menu of your deck, if you have it you can turn it all the way up and it will help a lot. SLA - source level adjustment. but i would get a couple fans on that orion immediately lol.
     
  4. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    I looked through the manual for the radio and didnt see a source level adjustment.
     
  5. jonnyv713

    jonnyv713 The Young Gun of CAT

    i never trust the manual... it is usually in the same area in your HU as the bass, treble, balance, fade, etc...
     
  6. electrolytic

    electrolytic Full Member

    That's weird, i don't know alpine but i think 4 volt preout should be plenty for an old amp like that, just doesn't make sense to me, seems like your missing something maybe in your decks settings. Are you sure it's hooked to sub out rca from the deck lol, must be if you have control of bass boost. Is there a clipping light on those amps? Do you hear distortion at all with the gain on full?
     
  7. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    There's no clipping indicator lights on the amp. I turned the gain all the way up, because this is where it sounded good. At 3/4 gain, it sounded whimpy(not much bass). My radio does have a sub level output. I'm gonna max that out and turn the amp gain down and see how that goes. I bet I'm overlooking something dumb. Gonna re-read the install manual this weekend. I'm also going to buy a line driver....and install a fan. If you guys have any other ideas, let me know.
     
  8. jonnyv713

    jonnyv713 The Young Gun of CAT

    ELECTRO! what did u do that one time that made u feel stupid when u werent getting good bass? wasnt it like a bridge button or something?
     
  9. electrolytic

    electrolytic Full Member

    Oh ya lol, when i first got my orion 2100 i had it bridged at 1 ohm but there is a mono button on the amp that i didn't know about that has to be pushed in when you bridge the amp to get the full power, but i don't think he has that on his
     
  10. electrolytic

    electrolytic Full Member

    The sub gain on your deck shouldn't be much higher than +2db or +4db anything over that and you will just be amplifying a garbage bass signal that's way to hot or high frequency of bass that will just sound muffled. Try bring the sub gain on your deck down so you have a cleaner signal and maybe bring up the deepest bass in your eq and then you should be able to back the gain on your amp back a bit. If that makes sense lol sorry
     
  11. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    Yeah...looks like I have a lot of adjusting to do with my radio. I'm not used to these complicated new radio's. I'm oldschool. I was into car audio in the early to mid 90's. Just kind of got back into it to use some equipment I had on the shelf for a long time. The radio has a built in eq, parametric eq, and sub output. I'm gonna turn the amp gain down to about 3/4....then start adjusting things on the radio. Hey, my fans came in today....another project! I also ordered an 8v line driver. I'll let you guys know how everything turns out in the next few weeks. I have so many other things to do, the radio stuff is kind of on the back burner.
     
  12. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    also, no mono button on my amp! :)
     
  13. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    Electrolytic, that 2100 HCCA is(was?) a hardcore amp. How was it before you blew it up? What happened?
     
  14. pedro quiroga

    pedro quiroga Well-Known Member

    sweet another old schooler on here. before i got my ED nine.5 amp i was sporting some old PG amps.
    [​IMG]

    oh and i still have em. might do something with them again one day. i couldnt afford them back then but now....
     
  15. pedro quiroga

    pedro quiroga Well-Known Member

    oh and i sold the eq. should of just kept it. but oh well.
     
  16. jonnyv713

    jonnyv713 The Young Gun of CAT

    i thought u put your oldschool PG stuff in ure mom's car or something...
     
  17. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    Guess what?.....I think I found the problem! I pulled the RCA's out of my sub amp so I could listen to the rest of my system. Now my left front speakers aren't working! It's always something. Anyways, after having my stereo on for about 5 min, without the sub amp playing....I touched it and it was hot in the upper right corner. I took the amp out, and took it apart. The transistors are under metal hold down clips. I removed them all and found 2 burnt transistors. On page 10 of the manual, they are in the lower right corner of the circuit board, labeled "PRS power supply mosfet switches". Its funny that it still played well for a little while with these toasted. So, I'm gonna keep this amp for spare parts and install another one. Bought this bad one on ebay...looked mint too. Almost perfect heatsink and really nice looking circuit board. I just never looked under those hold down clips! Those transistors even left black marks under the metal clips. Guess ebay or buying anything used is a crap shoot.............now I have to figure why my front left doesnt play???? Checked fader and balance, so either my other amp blew that channel or its my crossover for those components. I'll figure it out tomorrow.
     
  18. jonnyv713

    jonnyv713 The Young Gun of CAT

    you can have that fixed if you think it is worth it... Depending on how much you paid for it and how broke you are, you can call an electronics repair shop and get a quote on it.
     
  19. ANDYK

    ANDYK Full Member

    Who makes a good 4-channel amp? Something around 50 x 4. How are the Alpine amps? One channel is now out on the 4 channel I was using! Damn I'm having bad luck! Back in the late 80's and early 90's Alpine amps were really nice for mids and highs when using an Alpine head unit. I don't know if this is the case now.
     
  20. jonnyv713

    jonnyv713 The Young Gun of CAT

    Alpine is a very solid product too, but none of us really use Alpine amps because they are rather expensive. If i were you, i would save the money i would spend on that amp and buy something else.

    http://sonicelectronix.com/item_5428_Soundstream+PCA4.400.html

    http://sonicelectronix.com/item_11792_Kenwood+KAC-6404.html

    http://sonicelectronix.com/item_8438_JBL+CS60.4.html

    opposed to

    http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=abcat0302001&type=category

    actually this is a rather good price on this alpine amp below. I dont know how good they are though.

    http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=19262