Amp Diagnosis

[burko 6]

Installed all of my wiring today, and I had a bit of a problem. I have the gain at about 1/4 until tomorrow, when I'll set it properly. The sub is getting power, I know that for a fact. When music is playing, I can hear a slight murmur of the beat. The bass remote to my AQ2200D constantly displays the red "clipping" light, but I find it odd that the "power" light is not lit up. I'm almost certain from viewing similar problems that the responses I will get are, "quadruple check your wiring!!", but I did that before it all was installed. If there are no other options, I'll pull everything out and check once more, but I doubt this is the case. Does anyone know a possible problem that could be causing my system to do this?

Edited May 18, 2011 by burko

[shizzzon 461]

um.. check the amp and see what lights are lit up on it.

If you have a GREEN light on for power, and you are getting that constant red light for clipping.. i'd say one of 2 things are going on-

1- you wired your sub out of phase which can damage both sub and amp very soon!

2- there is a problem with the input signal stage on the amp. Whether this be with the amp or the rcas

Or THREE- you got the amp set to slave rather than master, check that switch!

[jonbearsmt 919]

few things first.....

unhook your sub... reset the amp.... is the clipping light still on?

2 unhook your RCAs.... reset your amp... light still on?

3unhook your remote gain.... then hook your subs and RCA back up... now what happends?

[burko 6]

When I unhooked the speaker wires and reset the amp, the clipping light remained on. This tells me that the wiring of the subwoofer is not the problem. I then unhooked the RCAs and reset once more; the light remained on. The RCAs are ok. And yes, the switch is set to master

According to that, I would assume it could be only a small number of things. Either the ground is not good enough (I have no idea if this would cause my amp to display a clipped signal), a wire is grounding where it shouldn't be (perhaps somewhere in the engine compartment?), or the amp itself is malfunctioning. If there are any other possible resolutions, please let me know. If I don't have a functioning system by tonight, I just may

Edited May 18, 2011 by burko

[shizzzon 461]

unhook the remote gain controller and turn amp back on.

If it still doesn't come on right, put a dmm on the amp's pwr\grn terminal and see what voltage is being read.

Anything 9v or higher means it's more than likely faulty

[ssh 924]

unhook the remote gain controller and turn amp back on.

If it still doesn't come on right, put a dmm on the amp's pwr\grn terminal and see what voltage is being read.

Anything 9v or higher means it's more than likely faulty

9v or higher? You mean lower? And even so, 10v is scary low.

[shizzzon 461]

no, if it's reading over 9v then it's not the power or ground therefore the amp must be faulty since he's already checked-

Speaker wire removal

RCA removal

--> waiting for OP to unplug remote gain controller

And AQ amps are rated to handle voltages that low.

[ssh 924]

no, if it's reading over 9v then it's not the power or ground therefore the amp must be faulty since he's already checked-

Speaker wire removal

RCA removal

--> waiting for OP to unplug remote gain controller

And AQ amps are rated to handle voltages that low.

Okay that makes sense now, that the electrical is high enough for the amp to function. But I still wouldn't run anything consistently under 11v.

[shizzzon 461]

oh i know.. if it was.. we'd have other issues to fix but right now.. just tryin to figure the amp out first.

[burko 6]

Something is faulty in the amp. I hooked up my bro's Hifonics Brutus (I believe it's rated at either 1800 or 2000 watts), and it played beautifully. I'm EXTREMELY happy with my box, sub, and wiring. I guess I just got a faulty amp?

I'm gonna try to contact one of the guys from AQ and see what my options are for a new one.

I'll put a vid up of it playing on the Brutus in a few.