Any idea why my sub is shot?

Ok, I have a RCSB with a custom built box/console tuned to somewhere around 35-40Hz (I don't remember). My problem is that I just installed it with a 10 inch Kicker CVR about 6 months ago and the CVR is just about dead. At lower volume it will just lock up and not do anything but if I push on it it will start again. I guess the voice coils are bad. The place I bought it from will swap me a new one for $50 so I'm not too worried. I just want to find out what caused it to blow so soon. It is rated at 800 watts peak and my amp is only a 300 watt amp so I know it isn't being overpowered. Any ideas would be great. Thanks

check and see if the tensile leads are broken, thats a common problem with some models of kicker sub's. even though you may not be overpowering it, it is possible to not have your amp gain matched to your head unit correctly causing some inaudible distortion. The best thing to do is get a reputible shop, put a multimeter on it, and get it gain matched professionally.

a common misconception is that power blows a sub. It is distortion that kills them more than power. there is no need to go into all of the jibba jabba of testing the gains and other nonsense. just turn your bass to flat on your headunit, turn the gain all the way down, turn your volume up about 3/4, if you have a remote bass knob then turn it up about 3/4 too. Then use your boost on the amp while listening to several different types of music until you get an all around good sound, then if you still aren't satisfied use a little gain. if you have to go more than half you might as well get a better amp cause you will be putting stress on your amp and sub. My white Z71 was one of the loudest, best sounding trucks I ever built in my 5 years of installing and I had the gain on my sub amp at zero. I ran a Rockford Fosgate Power 500.1bd on two P2 12's and you could see my dash shake like no body's business. To top it all off, the sound quality was great. If I remember correctly it hit a 140 in the port.

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Originally Posted by lo-lyf

a common misconception is that power blows a sub. It is distortion that kills them more than power. there is no need to go into all of the jibba jabba of testing the gains and other nonsense. just turn your bass to flat on your headunit, turn the gain all the way down, turn your volume up about 3/4, if you have a remote bass knob then turn it up about 3/4 too. Then use your boost on the amp while listening to several different types of music until you get an all around good sound, then if you still aren't satisfied use a little gain. if you have to go more than half you might as well get a better amp cause you will be putting stress on your amp and sub. My white Z71 was one of the loudest, best sounding trucks I ever built in my 5 years of installing and I had the gain on my sub amp at zero. I ran a Rockford Fosgate Power 500.1bd on two P2 12's and you could see my dash shake like no body's business. To top it all off, the sound quality was great. If I remember correctly it hit a 140 in the port.

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i hit 143.2 db tucked underneath

Seriously, you don't use the gain? Gain > boost. If you gain match the amp at >75% volume you will most likely never have a clipped signal(unless its in the recording) which is what kills speakers not distortion. What you described is exactly opposite of what you should do, turn the gain up until you have good sound and if you feel like you need to kill your sub give them a little boost. Click!

Back OT,
Some subs just "wear" out premature. I had a 8 month old sub "slinky" on me for no apparent reason. The only other thing I can think of is clipped signal trying to get more power from a weak amp to get more sound. If you want help with an audio system checkout stevemeadedesigns.com Great group of people over there.

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Originally Posted by Duct_tape123

Seriously, you don't use the gain? Gain > boost. If you gain match the amp at >75% volume you will most likely never have a clipped signal(unless its in the recording) which is what kills speakers not distortion. What you described is exactly opposite of what you should do, turn the gain up until you have good sound and if you feel like you need to kill your sub give them a little boost. Click!

Back OT,
Some subs just "wear" out premature. I had a 8 month old sub "slinky" on me for no apparent reason. The only other thing I can think of is clipped signal trying to get more power from a weak amp to get more sound. If you want help with an audio system checkout stevemeadedesigns.com Great group of people over there.

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if you say so, I've had some loud cars/trucks and never busted a sub so do what you want to do. I've also seen more clipping from an amp that had too much gain. I used to think you used gain before boost until I started working for Chuck's Car Stereo here in Wichita Falls. I always wondered why my stuff came back for warranty with busted subs at the other shops, and why I never saw but one or two warranties in my two years of installing for Chuck. The ones I did see was the ones that the customer took home and jacked with the GAIN on the amp. Either way, I'm not here to argue and start a fight, do what you want to do. All I'm saying is my techniques are tried trued and tested, and I've seen more satisfied customers than I have heard customers say it isnt loud enough.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lo-lyf

a common misconception is that power blows a sub. It is distortion that kills them more than power. there is no need to go into all of the jibba jabba of testing the gains and other nonsense. just turn your bass to flat on your headunit, turn the gain all the way down, turn your volume up about 3/4, if you have a remote bass knob then turn it up about 3/4 too. Then use your boost on the amp while listening to several different types of music until you get an all around good sound, then if you still aren't satisfied use a little gain. if you have to go more than half you might as well get a better amp cause you will be putting stress on your amp and sub. My white Z71 was one of the loudest, best sounding trucks I ever built in my 5 years of installing and I had the gain on my sub amp at zero. I ran a Rockford Fosgate Power 500.1bd on two P2 12's and you could see my dash shake like no body's business. To top it all off, the sound quality was great. If I remember correctly it hit a 140 in the port.

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i agree, gain is very bad on subs, you also might wanna check the ohm load, that causes subs to go bad more often than anything else, is the sub a 2 or a 4 ohm and what does your amp run? let me know if you have any other questions, i have a car audio shop in ada oklahoma

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Originally Posted by timothy_james07

i agree, gain is very bad on subs, you also might wanna check the ohm load, that causes subs to go bad more often than anything else, is the sub a 2 or a 4 ohm and what does your amp run? let me know if you have any other questions, i have a car audio shop in ada oklahoma

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I'm glad someone agrees with me. i was starting to doubt myself, but then again I have seen tons of stuff that people have messed up because they thought they knew what was best because they saw it on a website. Also gain>boost on mids and highs, gain<boost on subs. My four channel is sitting at about 1/4 on the gain and needs to be turned down a smidge. my sub gain at zero. Truck is very loud even with the junk klickers under the back seat. I guess I have my 8V Eclipse to thank for my sound quality and little need for amp power.

yea we usually turn gain to maybe the first notch on the amp, mostly kicker, JL, jvc, crossfire product. everything can be tuned almos the same depending on how good your stereos EQ is

Right, I installed Rockford, Diamond, and Eclipse at Chuck's. They are all pretty close. I was install manager for about 6 months at a shop that dealt JL, Memphis, and some Crossfire and they too were pretty close as far as tuning. I have found that sometimes Kicker needs a little more from the gain than the others though. That might have been too that I don't like turning my boost up more than 3/4, just like I always tune at 3/4 volume on the head.

haha...you guys crack me up...

to the OP, if the sub gets "stuck" then the voice coils overheated, u need a new sub or to have that one rebuilt, if u can get one for $50 i say do it!

yea we usually have the volume at the highest the customer would want to have it and tune from there, and i agree that kicker does need a little more gain, ive never had any subs go from gain unless the customer decides to go home and "play" with the install after being told that it would cause problems, those are always fun people to deal with when they come in wanting it fixed and you see the gain turned up all the way

I know exactly what you are talking about. we had to mark the gains on this one guys amp at the Audiosource while I was working there. They get all pissy and think it's your fault when it isn't.

I have kept the gain way down on my old punch amp and 1 JL 10. I attribute the long life of each because of it. It also helps if you don't blast ghetto middle class thug gangsta 4 life rap music all the time.

I'm not trying to start an argument, I just wanted to get the facts straight. But it definitely sounds like the OPs sub "slinkied" on him. If you take the sub out of the box and flip it around and you hear a slinky noise the one(or both) of the voice coils came unglued. Did it ever start to stink like electrical burning?

It did smell very, very faintly like burning but that was a couple weeks ago and before the problem started so I shrugged it off. I pulled the sub out yesterday and saw that one of the positive leads had come loose. So basically the voice coil that was still wired up was getting way too much power and burnt itself up. I paid the guy $75 and swapped it for a 12 inch CVR. The new problem is that the new one is a dual 2 ohm sub and my amp is only 2 ohm stable. Is it worth swapping the amp out for a 2 channel or a 1 ohm stable amp? Right now, at 4 ohms it sounds the same as the 10 did at 2 ohms so I know it has more in it.

either see if you can get a dual 4 ohm or see about getting a 1ohm stable mono amp, might want to get a bigger amp that runs about 400-500 watts rms @1ohm anyway. It's always worth it to have more power. just a thought.

Replace the sub and have someone with an oscope set your amp, saying an amp wont clip because the gain or boost is at a certain level is more of a guessing game than anything.
The oscope will tell you where it begins to clip and you can set you gains/boost/ accordingly and know at what volume setting the clipping will begin to happen at and not go past it.