I'm about to give up, help please!

[Johannes]

By the way my head unit is the Clarion DX425.

[Johannes]

Would improper grounding be the cause of not much power going to the sub? Or is it that if it's grounded at all then that's good enough?

[sr20de4evr]

bad grounds can cause a lot of different problems, it's worth a shot

[Johannes]

Okay I tried hooking up an IRiver MP3 player with a wire coming out the headphone jack that splits into RCA cables and I hooked that up to my amp, and the sub did pound!

These are just regular home RCA cables... could my Wal-mart RCA cables be the whole problem? I have other home RCA cables I will try when I get my head unit back (it's getting warranty work done at A&B sound, it busted today).

The sub was pounding pretty nicely with gain at Normal - 60% and it had some high coming through it but when I flicked the Low Pass Filter on it sounded awesome... no speakers playing but it still pounded good!

The salesman at A&B sound said it was because my amp is so low powered. My Pioneer amp is 100W x 1 RMS with my MTX sub which is recommended 50 - 250W RMS, or my 150 W RMS Stage 1 RF... he said that with both of those subs I need a way more powerful amp. Obviously he's just trying to push his expensive product... but he was claiming that my problem was because of a low power amp... but it should still put out some power to the sub! I hope the problem is just shitty RCA cables. Could this be it?

[sr20de4evr]

I think it's your headunit, when you get it back from the warranty work the problem might be fixed (hopefully), if not you can try new rcas and see what happens. At least you know it's not the sub or amp

[RickwithaTbird]

im just curious... how did you turn the amp on w/o the system remote signal coming from the head unit? And about the warranty work on your deck, hopefully they CANT fix it and they have to give you your money back, so you can buy a deck with a sub out put. That way you can still set your HPF w/o killing signal to your sub.

[Johannes]

I hooked up the remote wire to a power wire. I kind of thought it would make sense and then I checked the amp instructions and it said to do that if the Head Unit doesn't have a remote output.

My head unit makes a ticking noise as if something is stuck in there, it won't play CD's. They'll probably just remove whatever is in there or fix it. Why would this particular head unit be filtering out low frequencies? It doesn't list HPF as a feature on the box or instructions...

[Johannes]

My amp comes with a little square plug where you hook up 4 wires... pos and neg from left and right speaker... since I only have two speakers and my head unit is 50w x 4, could I hook this up incase my RCA cables are the problem? This is supposed to be for head units without RCA outputs, but is it as effective?

[RickwithaTbird]

the instructions always say its just as effective, but Ive never tried it. I say hook it up.

[Johannes]

Yeah hopefully when I get it back I can try that. I phoned today and added in the bad RCA plugs thing to the warranty work, I wonder if they're busted or just a High pass thing?

[RickwithaTbird]

who knows, its too bad you didnt get a chance to hook the amp up to your mids before you shipped it out. That could have saved some time wondering. I really hope there was something wrong with your deck, because if not, then im not sure what to think next.

[Johannes]

I did hook up my 6" speakers to my amp... one on each channel... and then one and the sub and all that. It sounded terrible... running the speakers straight off the deck was way better.