markhamJohn

Hi guys, I have a problem...

I purchased a kaption spl1200 dual 4 Ohm in a bassworks sealed box...I haven't purchased an amp yet but I'm thinking about getting the alpine mrd m605 and is rated at 600WRMS @ 2 Ohms....The kaption sub is also rated at 600WRMS so its a perfect fit...But since I'm an impatient ******* I decided to hook up the sub to my friend's alpine mrd m301 which is rated at 375WRMS @ 2 Ohms...At low volumes the sub sounded fine, but as we increased the volume maybe to about 3/4 the way up, the sub stopped working...We looked at the amp and it had an error code "CURR" and checked that on the manual and it said that the amp turned off because there was too much current so I tried to hook it up to my other friends PPI amp which is rated at 500WRMS @ 2 Ohms and the same problem happened...So i decided to ask some friends and they said that an amp that is severly underpowered can actually burn the voice coil on the sub...Is this true??...I've done some tests on the sub, connected speaker wires to the positive and negative terminals on the voice coils and connected a AA battery to it, and the cone actually moves...I've checked the resistance on the coils, people tell me its supposed to be at 4 Ohms per coil but thats not what I got on Ohmmeter, it seems to be jumping all over the place....What did I do? is the voice coil burned out? Is there anything i can do to test the sub and see if it still works and if something is wrong, where can i go to fix it?....I've only had the sub for a couple of days....Your help will be much appreciated!!!

xxPunk0Ramaxx

It's a relatively common wive's tale. There is no possible way a speaker can be damaged by "too little" power. The cause of this issue is usually related to a user trying to compensate for a smaller power amplifier by turning up the gain on their amplifier. This often causes a situation known as clipping, which can damage a driver, but again, only because a clipped signal carries more average power over time than a perfect sine wave; if the average power over time carried by the clipped signal is below the driver's limit, clipping will not damage it either.

As a quick recap, only too much power can damage a driver. Well, I guess a sledgehammer might too

markhamJohn

The gain on the amp was not turned more than half way...My friend's amp that I tried it on, he was running a kaption spl1000 which has the same rms rating as the kaption spl1200 so wouldn't it essentially be the same? or is there a difference?....because my friend's system ran perfectly fine with the 1000 and for some reason the 1200 doesn't work

Killer_klown187

iTrader: (20)

what size power wires are you running? I think everyone will agree 500wrms+ starts getting hungry!!! Other then that, I would think the error "curr" would mean Current!!!! but im not an alpine specialist Just my 0.2

markhamJohn

My friend's system runs 4 guage power wires so that should be more than enough for an amp thats 375WRMS and as I specified before, yes "curr" means current and I checked the alpine manual and it said "The amp turned off because there was too much current" Now when I put a dual 4 Ohm sub woofer in parallel it becomes 2 Ohms therefore I would need an amp that is 2 Ohm stable which the alpine was...The funny thing is, my friend has a kaption spl1000 which has the same specs as the 1200 in rms rating so why would the amp cut out? what I'm thinking is, maybe the sub is a dual 2 Ohm so if I paralleled the circuit it would theoretically be running at 1 Ohm and therefore it would draw too much power from the amp and not be able to handle the current requirements of the sub...Also another question for the experts, I took the sub out of the box and connected an ohmmeter to each of the voice coils and I really didn't get a solid reading....the values were all over the place jumping up and down...does this mean that the sub is no good? or what is wrong with it? i sure hope i didn't buy a lemon...I'd rather find out that i screwed it up than blame the person that I bought it off of.....if the voice coils of a sub are burned out, does it still work? or it won't work at all because the sub still works everytime i reset everything but when i crank up the bass it cuts out...thanks for the input guys

Haunz

iTrader: (3)

check the dc resistance with the sub unhooked from the amp... you should get a solid reading with no fluctuations... if you get numbers that are jumping around your meter is either shat, the sub is still hooked up to the amp, or something is causing the cone to move, even if just slightly...

If its dual 4 each coil should measure around 3ohms....




also, bad grounds and shorting wires/tinsel leads can cause your problem...