So today I finished my wireing for my new amp and sub and the amp is getting power just fine seeing as the lights on it turn on and the status light is green. However when I turn the gain up on the amp the sub does absolutely nothing. The amp has a 4 gauge power/ground wire so its not that the amp is not gettin the power. The amp, which is a mono channel, has two positive and two negative outputs on it and the manual showed that you have wire going out of all four and into two separate wires into the sub. So I have about 6 inches of twelve gauge for both positive and negative leading into the 8 gauge which has banana plugs on the end of it to plug into the switch panel on the back of the box. So maybe could it be a bad solder somewhere or maybe the rca's unplugged themselves when I put the head unit back in? Also the amp came with a dash mounted remote gain control so could it be that the remote one does not work? These are about the only ideas I could think of, anyone else have some possible solutions?

Thanks, David

What amps model? Pics would help. The internet is a tough place to trouble shoot issues. Quite possibly bad RCA's or preouts. Where are you located?


On the other hand....you have other fingers.

In my family we teach that boys have a God-stick and girls have a Shame Cave. -John Stewart

Put a multimeter on the speaker outs on the amp, set it to ac volts, and see if it shows a reading, and if it goes up with the gain. Go from there.

JL- this is the amp and the sub. I am at school right now so I will get pics up later today. And I am located in Carpentersville, Illinois.


Lanman- I did think of that idea last night but i just did not try it yet, so I will try that today and let you know the result.

So i have the pics as requested. I know it is not the prettiest/cleanest wireing job, but that can be solved later. I just thought of this today since the rca cable for the amp is running next to the power cable for the amp, would that possibly cause a problem? I know you are not supposed to run them close since it causes interference, but would it cause an amp to not put out power? I also hooked up the multimeter to the amp, yes I did set it to ac, and turned the gain up and the amp put out nothing. I double checked to see if the meter was working by hooking it up to my other amp and I did get a reading. Also I know peple on this site are not big fans of caps, but I read they can help you system and could be used. Since my alternator is stock and my battery is nothing to crazy I figured it would be worth a try. So could the cap possibly be the culprit here? Any suggestions? Here are the pics-


The entire set up


amp and cap


close up of amp outputs, you can see it has four total, two neg. and two pos.


here you can see where the two wires coming off the amp go into one


the back of the box, banana plugs going into it

Thanks, David

It's a shame you didn't live closer to me. Would love to trouble shoot hands on and clean that horrid install while I'm at it lol.


On the other hand....you have other fingers.

In my family we teach that boys have a God-stick and girls have a Shame Cave. -John Stewart

definatly check the rca's. if the amp turns on and you not outputting any sound. its the rcas for sure. make sure that the rcas are plugged into the SUB OUT on the hea dunit and are plugged into the Master in on the amp.





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I just checked the rca's on the back of the amp and they are plugged into the input ones. The other two sets are line out and slave in/master out and i know it is not those. Tomorrow ill take the dash apart and make sure the rca's are still plugged into the sub ports on the headunit. Is there any way to check and see if the rca ports on the headunit/amp are good? I was thinkin that I may have a bad port somewhere or even a bad cable.

Thanks, David

Anton, it is not guaranteed to be the wires. Dude you always have a very definitive way of giving advice on a subject that you, yourself were JUST learning, and clearly still are...

It COULD be the wires. The best way to check is get a spare set of wires, run em straight from the head unit to the amp, if the problem is solved, replace the wires. If not, it very well could be the preouts on the head unit. That is what it sounds like to me. If the amp is turning on and working, but the sub is not moving at all, and you are sure there isn't a loose wire inside the box(also possible), then it is somewhere between the preouts and the amp, whether it be the inputs on the amp, outputs on the head unit, or the wires.


On the other hand....you have other fingers.

In my family we teach that boys have a God-stick and girls have a Shame Cave. -John Stewart

have you run subs off of this head unit before? cause some headunits also have a thing where you can turn the sub off. did you check that yet?

jl: if the amp gets power and doesnt produce sound it will be 90% of the time the rca's, or somthing to do with the rca's, and he said he didnt check behind the radio yet so theres an even higher chance if he tried everything else but not that so far.





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Anton Miller wrote:make sure that the rcas are plugged into the SUB OUT on the hea dunit and are plugged into the Master in on the amp.

You dont have to plug it into the sub out. You can plug it into any preout you want and adjust the filters. Given youll lose bass if you fade away from the out put it is on. Some head units dont have a sub out. I put a system in my friends JVC head and it only has rear output.

Anton- I did look in my manual for the headunit and it does have something where you can turn the sub output on and off. So when I went into the menu for that all that was showing up was the front/rear high pass filter, the low pass filter, dual zone, and loud. But no freaking sub output....argh. The manual is also for one of Kenwoods higher up version of the headunit I have, so maybe that option is only for that headunit. Im in the process of taking the dash apart now.

Sundown- Thats what I am going to try to do just plug the rcas for the sub amp inot the rear and see if anything happens, and Ill try the rcas I have for my other amp. The reason I chose this headunit was because it had separate outputs for a sub thinking that when I did get my sub it would be plug and go....yeah not so much lol.

JL- Yeah if you did live closer your help would be much appreciated. And now since the trans on the car decided to die I will have plenty of time to clean up the wireing job.

Thanks for the help guys, David

somtimes you have to dig for it. if theres a button the hu that says like sw or just shows a speaker try pushing that to see if it under there. i know i had to hold a button down for like 5 seconds to get my subwoofer control to pop up the way it is now. Its a pioneer though.

keep us updated on the progress.





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So I did find the subwoofer control on the headunit and I turned it on, but still nothing. So what I did was I unplugged the rca's for the rears and plugged them into the sub ones, and the rears powered just fine. So the sub output on the headunit works. I then unplugged the rca's for the rear from the speaker amp and plugged the rca I had going to the sub amp and plugged that same rca into the rear port on the headunit, and the rears worked. So the rca cable is not bad. So its lookin like the rca port on the amp may be bad. I got the idea of maybe a blown fuse, but that wouldnt make sense because if there was a blown fuse the amp would not even power up correct? Also in the box it could be possible that the positive and negative touched each other and cause a short, so could that be the problem?

Thanks, David

possibly could have been the problem with the positive and negetives touching. but you should check that anyways. this time when you put the sub back in the box make sure that the wires cant touch each other or come undone. actually now that i think about it wouldnt the ampo go into protect mode if the wires touched?

i would say send it back and get a new one. its probly just a malfunction in the amplifier.





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DId you check and see if you had voltage on the rcas like I said?

Ill check inside the box after work tonight. What do you mean by voltage on the rcas, and how would I go about that with the multimeter? On the headunit ports or amp ones?

Shake your head unit loose. Do the ones at the head unit for front and rear. Set it at AC volts. Middle is pos, outside is negative, when the volume goes up the voltage should go up too. No volts = bad head unit. Or since you already have rca's run to the back, just tap off of them.

Anton Miller wrote:possibly could have been the problem with the positive and negetives touching. but you should check that anyways. this time when you put the sub back in the box make sure that the wires cant touch each other or come undone. actually now that i think about it wouldnt the ampo go into protect mode if the wires touched?

i would say send it back and get a new one. its probly just a malfunction in the amplifier.

From what Ive had personally happen to me. If he were to blow the fuses it would go into protection, if he then cycled the amp off then on, the amp would not go into protection because there is no short because the fuse is blown. When I tried hooking my first system up on my own I didnt even have fuses in the amp and it still powered up and didnt protect.

Fuses are always the first thing to check if you arent getting power somewhere.

I checked the fuses on the amp and they are good. The sub rca output on the headunit does give voltage because I plugged the rcas for my rear speakers into them and my rear speakers worked fine. I also used the same rca cable and ran it from the sub amp to the output for my rear speakers on the headunit, which I know works, and plugged that in and still nothing. The headunit is fine so it looks like the amp is defective. Im still gonna take the box out and open it today to check for any loose connections.

Thanks, David