Subwoofers won't work, but all connections good...

[ShadowRaven]

All right guys, I know I haven't posted in this forum in a while, but I've run into another snag. Got done lifting my truck on Friday, everything seemed fine, but today my subwoofers just completely s%&^ out on me and I have no clue why. Here's what I have checked:

Power/Ground - Good, voltage read with multimeter
Remote - connected, amp is turning on
RCA - Triple checked just to make sure, connections are good/correct, same result every time
Speaker wires - Pos to pos, neg to neg, all checked sat, voltage read with MM

I have no clue wtf is going on. They started sputtering, like missing beats and what not, and then died all together. When I put my ear against both of them, I hear a sound similar to the volume being turned up really loud, but no music coming through, just a very quiet hiss, if that makes any sense. I'm about to blow up my sound system and just buy a new one, I swear to God. Please if anyone has any thoughts, I need help on this one, I have no clue wtf at all. Thanks in advance.

 

[corkey]

are they grounded to the chassis of the truck??, maybe a ground strap to the frame is not big enuff, so the amp goes into safety,,

try running a booster cable to the negative terminal of the battery from the amp ground,, see if that works,,

 

[ShadowRaven]

are they grounded to the chassis of the truck??, maybe a ground strap to the frame is not big enuff, so the amp goes into safety,,

try running a booster cable to the negative terminal of the battery from the amp ground,, see if that works,,

Well, I had to take the entire sub box out to do the lift, so I suppose there is a possibility that the ground could be jarred loose. I have it ground to a paint scraped bolt under the rear carpeting, aka the body. The only issue is I have both my amps running in somewhat of a parallel config, aka, both grounds = same point, both are using the same power wire split into 4 ga and 1/0 ga. I know that the power and thermal lights are on on my sub amp, but the protect is not, which if I recall is normal. Plus if I was getting 16+V when reading B+ and GND terminals with MM, wouldn't that mean everything is fine? Man wires are annoying

 

[ShadowRaven]

Well, I just got done checking all my grounds. Batt to frame was loose, tightened; both body to frames were loose, tightened; all other grounds were good. Tested it, subs still making that same noise, gonna have to keep troubleshooting tomorrow, I guess, sigh.

 

[Infinity08]

If the amp is turning on, the power connections are working. Pull the drivers from the box (I know, PITA). I would bet on a loose connection inside the enclosure. It has happened to me more than once, and it is annoying as hell.

 

[ShadowRaven]

If the amp is turning on, the power connections are working. Pull the drivers from the box (I know, PITA). I would bet on a loose connection inside the enclosure. It has happened to me more than once, and it is annoying as hell.

Lol, yeah it does suck cus these suckers weigh 30 lbs apiece, however, I already checked that. I pulled both subs and checked voltage on interior of speaker cup and at both VoiceCoil connections, was reading about 16V when I had music going. That was the first thing I thought was the problem, I've burned several speaker cups with these woofers, but unfortunately this time, it's not the culprit :/ I'm gonna try pulling the HU out again tomorrow, hopefully something is wrong there that I'm just missing.

 

[BrianDye]

Are they making any noise besides the whining, like is music coming from them?

You might have blown a channel on the amp, try connecting like a home stereo speaker or something to the amp, see if it plays anything out of it, if not, double check the RCA's, and if those are good, your channels are shot.

Its happened to 2 of my amps, plus my moms bf's son's BRAND NEW hifonics amp.

 

[ShadowRaven]

Are they making any noise besides the whining, like is music coming from them?

You might have blown a channel on the amp, try connecting like a home stereo speaker or something to the amp, see if it plays anything out of it, if not, double check the RCA's, and if those are good, your channels are shot.

Its happened to 2 of my amps, plus my moms bf's son's BRAND NEW hifonics amp.

They're pretty much just making a humming noise, I can hear it distinctly while my usb harddrive is loading up, and the woofers are just warming up (aka before music cuts on) Yeah, I have a little Pioneer 8 in my house, so I'll try hooking that up tomorrow, I swear to God if my amp is blow... man... I don't know what I'll do, I've only had it for 2 years.

 

[BrianDye]

Yeah, i had a brand new Kenwood 250 watt, before I was serious with my a/v, and i just had a little like 400w mtx sub, sounded great, then one day, it wasnt playing, and i switched it from the left channel input/output to the right, and it worked so i had blown a channel within like a year.

I have my Hifonics 3600w beast, and I hadnt secured my box down, when i had 12's in my taurus, and they slid back, wedged up against the trunklid, and then ripped the RCA cable, and snapped one of the RCA inputs, so i have it bridged right now, plus its making this real high pitched kinda quiet whining noise from the AMP not the subs.

So im gonna be upgrading here probably by summer lol

 

[ShadowRaven]

Yeah, i had a brand new Kenwood 250 watt, before I was serious with my a/v, and i just had a little like 400w mtx sub, sounded great, then one day, it wasnt playing, and i switched it from the left channel input/output to the right, and it worked so i had blown a channel within like a year.

I have my Hifonics 3600w beast, and I hadnt secured my box down, when i had 12's in my taurus, and they slid back, wedged up against the trunklid, and then ripped the RCA cable, and snapped one of the RCA inputs, so i have it bridged right now, plus its making this real high pitched kinda quiet whining noise from the AMP not the subs.

So im gonna be upgrading here probably by summer lol

Haha, yeah I hear it man. The worst part about it is if one channel is blown, the whole amp is blown, GOOOO MONOCHANNEL WOO! Fingers crossed, right?

 

[BrianDye]

Lmao yeah im runnin 2 15" L7s MONO! haha

but yessir fingers crossed xD haha
Lets hope maybe your RCA's just slipped off the radio, I always put a piece of elec. tape around mine where they connect so that never happens, my subs rattle so hard, fuses fall out and its ridiculous

 

[sjr033]

I would hook the subs up to another amp, either a home reciever or a friend amp. This will check the subs. Then I would hook the rca's from a friends hu or a home reciever. This will check the rca signal from your hu. The amp is on, so you need to figure out if the amp is not getting a signal from the hu, or the subs are blown, or the amp doesn't have an output.

 

[eFxpOlRoreDr]

hey i know that this sounds really stupid but i have had my subs stop working and i checked everything, but check the fuses on the amp, they can blow pretty easy and not a lot of people think of it

 

[BrianDye]

The amp lights wouldnt be on, and there DEFF wouldnt be a whining noise if it were the fuses.

 

[ShadowRaven]

The amp lights wouldnt be on, and there DEFF wouldnt be a whining noise if it were the fuses.

Yeah, you are right. The fuses, including internal, were the first things I checked, even though I knew it couldn't be them, with power going to the amp. I'll take another peek tomorrow after school and hopefully figure this nonsense out.

 

[aznboi3644]

meter the coils...check to see if they are still good.

 

[ShadowRaven]

meter the coils...check to see if they are still good.

Hahaha, aznboi, long time no see man, how's it been? I'm honestly not too knowledgeable on how to go about metering the coils, I'll google it, hopefully I can find out how. Another update on the sitrep, I just swapped my mids/highs rear RCA for my subwoofer RCA, same result, nothing changed. So it 100% isn't the RCA cabling, grounds, power, fuses, or remote. It really is looking like my amp died, which is fantastic -_-

 

[ShadowRaven]

I just connected the woofers to my mids/highs amp, they played music. So, it looks like my amp is KIA, I swear to God. Other good news is I now have to trouble shoot my rear right speaker also, cus I'm got no sound coming out of it. Bout to push this hunk of junk into a lake or something

 

[BrianDye]

Yeah man sorry to hear that, car audio can be f**king awesome, then at times it can be a complete pain in the ass lol,

 

[ShadowRaven]

Yeah man sorry to hear that, car audio can be f**king awesome, then at times it can be a complete pain in the ass lol,

Yeah, tell me about it man. Here's an update though, I plugged the SUB RCAs into my Rear mids/highs port and plugged my Rear mids/highs RCA into my subs port and still got music from mids/highs in the rear speakers. So does that mean that my SUB output on my HU is still functioning properly and it must be my amp that's funked? That's what it seems like to me. I'm about to take it to an audio shop and say fix this, but I don't want to do that if all I have to do is buy a new amp (insert expletive here)