SS SCHGD

your wire size should be just fine. 8 awg for 400 watts is plenty. Double check your wiring at the Sub. maybe you had the 2 voice coils fighting eachother? Then turn everything on the amp down, and adjust carefully with the new sub. (also turn off all Bass boost stuff from the headunit if it has it) and all the eq stuff down to 0. Then adjust acordingly.

supercharged2007

im using 4 guage on my jl to the amp and everything else is 1/0 .. good luck with it mike.

WhiteFiver

This.

mikelpn

Usually I would agree but like I said, I had some of the stuff lying around so I figured I'd use it.

WhiteFiver

Hey, fair enough. That was more so that you don't start using ******* power wire for your speaker wire lol. I've used some crazy **** before too, simply because I had it....ended up making my own twisted-wire 4/0 cable coming right off the battery, leading to sealed terminals in my grill for jumping other vehicles.

mikelpn

I only had about 10 feet lol. I'm just annoyed that I took such care to install it correctly and somewhere I fucked up. Grr...

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

^^^turned that **** up too high dude.

and regarding the whole speaker wire thing 16g is fine for 400w rms @ 2ohms. 18g @ 4

mikelpn

Ok, I think I've narrowed it down. I read on crutchfield that the amp has an imput voltage of 5v and since the H/U puts out 5v that the amp will be making full power with the gain turned all the way down. <-- any clarification on that?

Also I neglected a piece of information. When the sub first stopped working and I tried to diagnose the problem I noticed the front of the sub was hot. Then afterwards while on the phone with kicker when he was helping me troubleshoot he asked me to push on the sub and it was solid. No movement

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

yup that means you put so much power thru the speaker you not only burned the voice coil but heated up the metal so much it came loose and siezed in the gap to the motor itself

so i would take this as an etch-a-sketch moment... amazon took care of you and is sending you a new one this time but next time you probably wont be so lucky

mikelpn

Lessons learned I suppose. that's ok I get the new sub tomorrow and hopefully I'll get it right this time around. I might actually get to enjoy it this time around

thanks for all the help guys seriously quite possibly the best forum I've ever been apart of.

After I get everything set up and working tomorrow I'll be sure to post some pictures!

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

ok when ur setting the amp crank the volume to however loud ur gonna listen to it turn up the knob all the way and see how much your sub is moving. if its wigging out, too much power. Also make sure ur music is good not limewire bullshit. that could also be the culprit

mikelpn

I've got about 5500 songs on my ipod i'd say 99% are direct from either cd's or itunes store with a handful of crappy quality

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

cool u should be fine then.

mikelpn

ok another question. or questions. I wanna get it right this time so I need to know how to figure out how many volts my amp needs to be putting out and where I need to test it with my multimeter. I'm assuming the speaker terminals?