MGMDesertTaco's audio build

Lol it's just money.
No seriously tho if you can, I highly recommend it especially if you live in a place that gets snow. The sound and temperature difference with the floor covered is really noticeable.

 

Small setback today. The ground wire outlet was too small to accommodate the bolt for the passenger front seat and nobody had anything in stock for the 12 awg ground wire in Crutchfield's amp kit. Also, after pulling the whole truck apart I couldn't figure out how to remove the center console to route the power cable and speedwire.

I ended up pulling the harness apart and temporarily wiring it up short so I could at least test it and so everything including the amp tucked in behind the radio. I ran the setup pink noise via usb drive and everything seemed to go as planned, but upon doing the gain adjustment none of the gain lights would illuminate. I left them all the way down and played around with some test music.

It sounded like crap, like the amp wasn't putting any wattage out to the speakers and the amp was getting extremely hot (like too hot to touch). I disconnected the harness and the amp and put the interior and seats back in the truck so I can at least drive it.

What the frack did I do wrong? Is my amp defective?

 

Did you get it from Crutchfield? If you did then totally call them and if not them call Kicker. I don’t like calling for help but I say fuck it with this stuff, it’s worth it.

 

I'm planning on it. Crutchfield is out of stock on the amps until October 27th, 2022, but BestBuy has a few still. I did pick up a new soldering iron, soldering stand, and some solder from Home Depot this afternoon and a 3/8" ring terminal for my ground wire to mount to the passenger front seat bolt.

I'm going to run separate power and ground and give it one more shot. If it's junk I'll return it to Crutchfield.

I'm into this about $1200-$1300 and I'm deflated on the results to say the least. I should have just ponied up the cash and got the pro level sh*t the first time like you did. Buy once, cry once. I still might.

 

Rip off the band-aid!! Nah, one more go with the KEY, then weigh your options more than my limited attention span let me.

 

DM incoming

 

Where did you ground the amp after you shortened the harness?

 

my first suspicion is that the amp had a terrible temporary ground. you made the amp constipated with power.

 

It's installed and honestly it seems underpowered and the sound quality is garbage imo. I gave up on soldering/ separate power and ground and did everything behind the dash for now. Gains are set.

The CDT's need more power, and the focal rcx-165's sounded a heck of a lot better (sound quality wise) running off the pathetic 2-6 watts of factory head unit power and tweaking the factory eq.

I played around with factory head unit eq's and the key after the initial tune and wasn't impressed. The crossovers of the CDT's didn't give a noticeable change no matter how they were setup. Almost as if they don't work. Maybe because they're underpowered?

The entire setup thus far doesn't sound much better than a 90's boombox blasting in the garage. I've heard tube McIntosh Stereo's, computer gaming/audio setups with xfi creative sound cards, and played many Marshall amp stacks, so I was not expecting a whole lot with this budget and setup, but I'm disappointed in the results.

I might swap the front doors with Focal's RSE-165, but I doubt I'll be content. Not really sure what my next step is. I might return the key 500.1 and start over.

 

re-check your speaker phasing--ie, positive/negative.

might be one of the woofers, or it's input signal, is connected in reverse.

 

Wiring is good, the CDT's want more juice.

 

are you sure your wiring is good? because personally, that level of confidence is where i usually muck it all up(i have come back a day later to this exact scenario after calming down and found something really stupid more than once)!

are your gains all the way down yet? go 1/4-turn up, and re-do the pink noise testing. many amps are set so all the way down is nearly off/zero amplification. triple check your high level/low level input setting as well

the cdt's are 80wrms. there's no way that an additional 30wrms from any other amp is the difference between "80's boombox" and "totally worth all this hassle". way too many successful key amp installs for me to believe that. yes, it's possible the amp is bad, but still feel like that's a long shot..

looking at the cdt site now, the 6x9's are 3-ohm drivers. usually the nominal rated resistance is somewhat optimistic, maybe they're closer to 2ohm, and it's an issue with the 4-ohm minimum key amp?

oh, and in the pic, i see you're running a 80hz high pass--set the key crossover to bypass temporarily during this testing.

 

I don’t think 50w is going to be enough for the CDT’s.

I have mine running off of an Alpine PDX-V9 where the birth sheet says 128w a channel and I turned my gain up from “Nominal” to make them come alive.

 

Some old installer advice:

1. never put panels (i.e. door panels) back on until you've tested things, and preferably until you've installed and tested everything, though not always practical if it's your DD
2. work one component at a time where possible - I think this might be part of your issue. While you can underpower your speakers, that's not gonna happen if you run them off your stock HU for a week
3. On amps, turn off all DSP settings at first until you've got them initially dialed in

might add more as memories come back to me lol

 

Crossover settings don't do much except make the unity's bright or brighter. The 6x9's just don't have any bass and I'm getting quite a bit of muffled vocals from them. Any more suggestions? The amp is still getting too hot.

 

no bass and muffled vocals reminds me of the time i tried sealing the back of a speaker with duct tape(no i don't remember why, it was a good idea at the time). turns out some silver fabric duct tapes are conductive. it shorted the speaker terminals, and resulted in exactly that.

2 possibilities if the amp is getting hot, 1,bad/shorted wiring, 2, defective. stillborn amps just don't happen that often. they do, but it's not common enough to be a first expectation. that's part of the reason to use name-brand gear, and part of the reason that many brands offer the 'birth sheet' for output certification. to prove that the final product underwent some sort of testing and verification.

turning an 80hz high pass on/off should not ever alter the tweeter output. i'm suspicious of the passive crossover and it's connections, possibly the output from the amp.

do you have a DMM? before changing anything, check the resistance of the speaker outputs of the key. should be 3-6ohms. the amp getting hot could indicate that this is shorted.

if you bypass the crossover and go straight to the cdt woofer from the key amp, does everything start working?

could also try unplugging both the inputs and outputs from the key, change the turn-on to dc, and jumper the power to the 12v trigger. just let the amp sit there turned on. if it's still roasting, it'll be an amp issue.

could also try running only the auditors off the key, both on the rear output, and separately try it off the front output-- if their loudness is acceptable, and the amp stops imitating a toaster oven, it's going to be an issue with the cdt portion somewhere.

 

Hey OP I just have dumb questions but are you sure the power wiring to this amp is good — size of the wires and a good ground connection?

 

It’s not an OHM issue right? There’s not an Ohm switch on the amp. Speakers and amp are matched at 4 ohms?

 

I've got a multimeter, but haven't been inclined to pull the door panels off. It was 104 today (108 in the garage) and will be 111 or so this weekend, so motivation to go outside isn't there right now. I'm ready to move to a nice lake somewhere and buy a wake boat. AZ Summers suck.

John from CDT stated "These 6x9" are nominal impedance 4ohm with a voice coil DC resistance 2-3 ohms." I think this might be part of the problem. Maybe someone can explain that better to me?

Wiring is still jerry rigged behind the dash (power and ground) for now. I've ordered a new set of

$12 metra 71-1761 87 - 94 toyota vehicle harness

metra 71-1761/70-1761 and will redo the harness. I've also ordered an amp wiring kit for the key 500.1 and the Focal RSE-165's for the front doors/dash.

I'm holding off on the sub/ box purchase until the speaker issues get sorted. The RSE-165 Focal's were $150, so it's worth a try. If that's not good enough I might start with replacing the head unit and going bigger with the amp.

 

Perhaps one of the pins in the wiring harness backed out a bit when pushing in the harness? But that’s all just output to the speakers. If you have a lot of heat, that shouldn’t happen with the class D. I think each amp needs to be directly wired to the battery, so maybe if the power is coming temporarily from a setup behind the dash, you have the problem there. Heat I think indicates that the amp is trying to deliver power that it’s not recieving