altoncustomtech

That's fantastic!! I wish I was close enough to hear it as well. Out of idle curiosity, what settings have you ended up with thus far? (crossover points, slopes, and phasing?) I think it's particularly good for those who may not fully understand what correct phasing and tuning can accomplish to hear it from someone who's recently spent some time working heavily on tuning. Any chance you could give some details some time on the testing and the differences you heard when things started to come together?? Of course results will vary for all, but you could give some good insight as to why it's worth the trouble, I think.

WOW, I'm glad you cleared that up. I was really lost. LOL, j/k! Using your real name does just kind of make sense though, good move.

Oh yeah, there's a good recommendation. Thanks phi, forgot about that one.

There's no doubt the Big 3 is a necessity. You should very seriously have at least a couple of good size batteries for that kind of power and be thinking about saving for a HO alt. 2000 watts can be ran on a couple of good batteries, the big 3 and the factory alt as long as you're watching your voltage and not driving the amp into low voltage situations. IMO once you go well above 2000 then a HO alt and a good bank of batteries should be considered standard issue to keep from having any issues. Once the voltage begins to drop the current draw goes up quite a bit and so does the temp of the amplifier. That's not to say you have to have it all in place before you connect the first wire, but it should definitely be on the shopping list, also consider you may get all the output you're looking for without running the subs to full power. I should have mentioned it before for better suggestion results, what are the goals of your setup, what vehicle is it going into, what (if any) equipment do you already have?

Congratulations on an excellent purchase. Anything that can put out a clean 2500+ watts would be great. The new Sundown 2500 would be a perfect fit. A used or referbished SAZ 3000 would be a good match as well and there's a few for sale if you look around. The possibilities are really only limited by your budget and also make sure your electrical can hold up to the demands of that much power as well. Everyone will be mentioning their own favorite brands, you'll get lots of good recommendations.

Dang Impious, that was something else. Boredom can make us do some strange things. LOL

^X2 Just WOW.

Glad to see you got it fixed. I love to learn new things, and if Malware Bytes was able to fix your machine then I'll have to add that to my arsenal of software for helping people out. +1 to you Joe.

dude.... that REALLY sucks... depending on what's got ahold of your machine there may not be much you can do.... if you're using XP, Vista or 7 you can try a system restore to the last time it saved restore point... you may also try installing spybot search and destroy and ad-aware, download and install them in SAFE MODE and see if what has your machine is some sort of spyware they can clean out for you, as a matter of fact this should be your first move.... if neither of those things fix it there may not be much else you can do with it..... I absolutely HATE when that happens and its the main reason why EVERYONE should be using software that acts as Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, pop-up stopper, firewall and identity protection all at once and all the time... Or, if you don't use ALOT of windows based software you can switch to Ubuntu it's pretty safe from Viri...... or, dual boot it and watch all your porn on it... lol in all seriousness though, I feel for ya.... it really sucks when your machine gets whacked....

X2, X3, and more.... Everyone has great points here. Books or DVD's really won't help that much, they cover only the MOST basic skills usually and the examples won't work for EVERY vehicle out there. You'd still have to learn what you need to do for your specific vehicle. We're all on here for two main reasons, to learn anything new that we can, and to help out in any way we can. You'd be surprised how easy it is to learn once you dive into it and get your hands dirty. Then, you'll not only have learned some new things, you'll also have the pride to say you did it yourself. What kind of car do you have and where are you at? Chances are there's a forum member or two close by who could help out or give pointers where you need them.

THANKS GUYS!

That's probably the best, most straight forward set of questions I've seen asked to get the information needed from the OP this early in a thread in awhile. +1 to you for that. To the OP, answer these questions with good, useful and thorough information and your questions will be answered quickly and effectively I'm sure. There can be many recommendations made but this is what we all need to know.

Man, my B-Day is tomorrow, big 31. Wish it was my cake!!

First, I gotta say that problems like this are why I decided to spend a few extra bucks buying new amps and getting rid of all my Hifonics gear. I never found the amps very pleasing to listen to and the efficiency was rediculously overstated. If you're using 4 guage wire for the full run on that amp then you were definitely starving the amp for power IMO, along with the 80amp alt the amp was probably clipping badly. Then, as Nick stated, you can't go by the #'s that are screen printed on the amp, they're not accurate and most likely were never intended to be accurate. Next I'd hate to think the amp was outputting anything other than audio (i.e. switching frequencies, oscillations, etc.) but it's happened before so I wouldn't rule that out either. My last thought is of the box. Who built it? Are you absolutely certain the size and tuning are what they were stated to be? It honestly seems like you had more than one issue take out the sub. Fi makes some very tough, high quality drivers but anything that is not used in the manner it was designed will fail at some point. I understand being broke, but this is a good opportunity to look at the situation and do a little work determining what the factors were that played into the failure of the sub and while you're saving money for the recone you can be working on resolving the issues. If you're not 110% positive on the specs of the enclosure, post up the measurements and surely someone would be willing to go over the numbers and verify the enclosure was to spec. See if you can find someone with an Oscilloscope to check out the output on the amp and make sure it's not putting out anything other than good (clean as it can do) audio. Save up a few more dollars and get 1/0 guage wire and a second battery at the least to keep up with the power demands of the amp, a higher output alty would be a good future investment as well. Those are a few things you could do that will help assure this doesn't happen in the future. Fi does have warranty on their products, but items that have clearly been misused or abused will most likely not be covered, sorry. There's a good reasonable explanation for the failure and we'll do what we can to help you find it, that's what the community is for.

This is true..... I've seen it done several times. The hitch is making sure that you have the output on both amps matched as closely as possible. Which requires a DMM and some patience as you'll have to set your gains together and at every step making sure the voltage matches.

It's perfectly legitimate. You're looking at the 12", 15" and 18" size BTL's. All three sizes handle 2k RMS, the seperation is for the specs between Dual 1 and Dual 2 ohm voice coils. Size has nothing to do with power handling. AND when you do place your order..... WELCOME to the Fi family!

WOW..... it's been too long since I've been on here with enough time to browse.... Chop the truck looks like it's coming along great! Hope to make it up for slamology and see it in person......

Well, this came in today. Thought I'd share a few pics of it. My sister ordered this for her '02 Durango. She currently has a Kenwood KDC-X493 HU running to a Hifonics ZXi8006. PG RSD 6.5's in the front and JBL 6.5's in the back doors and a Pyle Red Label 12" Square sub that her ex had given her a few years ago. It should be a great upgrade to this from that Pyle POS and it should be at home on the ~300wrms @ 2 ohms the Hifonics is rated for. We'll be building a 2-2.25cuft enclosure for it as soon as I get my vehicles done this spring.

I know a guy here in Indiana..... have no idea what his rates are but he has examples of his work easily available..... shoot me a pm and I'll send you the contact info..

Kenwood Excelon series HU's. One is a KDC-X991 the other is a KDC-X492, both read the same thumbs before the IPod.

Before I got the IPOD I was using 2g, 4g, 8g and even one 16g all with no issues. Give us the model # on that player so we can look up some info on it. There's something different going on if it can read the 2g fine and not the 4g let alone the HDD. Like ulrisa said, it may have a 2g size limitation.

??? that's weird.... I've never played with my external HDD but my Kenwood's can read every thumb drive I have as long as they've got music on them.....

The partition on the HDD would have to be FAT, 16 or 32 wouldn't matter. The players won't read NTFS or any other type.

Oh man, I have no idea. Shipping calculator on UPS says it would be about $60 for shipping alone. I've not had a chance to load test these babies or anything yet. Like I said, company procedures state that they're to be replaced every 4 years, some get over-looked on accident. This 4 I have right now are 4 year old C&D Dynasty batteries that still worked good enough for the UPS to pass it's monthly test but I have no idea what they're worth if anything. The next set of batteries are 7 years old, but I'm not sure on the brand or condition yet as they still need pulled out, all I know is that it's passing it's test as well. The little ones are older as well, right at 7 years on them too but they're holding a solid 13v charge after sitting out of the unit for about a month and a half now. I dunno what I want for anything yet, or if any of them are actually worth selling. Lemme get them all and get them load tested, see how they're holding up and then I'll work on getting them sold. So give me about a week to get everything squared away with them, and like I said about the little ones before, any ideas on what I could do with all of them???

Heya guys... can anyone figure out what to use 40+ 12v 7Ah batteries for? The company I work for is going through replacing a BUNCH of UPS batteries (procedures require replacing at 4 yrs. regardless of battery condition) and instead of just getting rid of them I'm grabbing all that I can get. Like I said, I have over 40 7Ah (about the size of a motorcycle battery, I used one already in my DRZ works great!), a few C&D 75Ah batts which I think I'm going to use 2 or 3 of them maybe... I dunno yet... Anyway, lemme know if you guys have any ideas.... I'll have some more 75Ah+ size ones here in the next couple of weeks as well.