Did I just lunch my entire audio system?

Hello all,

as you’ve already probably deduced from the title, this is very much so an audio post.

friendly advice, similar stories or anything will be much appreciated.

For background:

I have a 2021 Tacoma trd off road. The non JBL system.

I did have a kicker hideaway 8” and ran that for a while until I wanted to upgrade. I went to a local shop and purchased a power bass 1200w mono amp for my pioneer 10” shallow box sub.

Now mind you. I have never had any issues with the quality of stock audio inside of my Tacoma… whether that be off of MP3/ phone/ radio.

so anyways, I go and do my runs yesterday and today. I run all my lines for my new amp and tie off of the old connections I had made from the front speakers on to a hi/lo bypass to some rcas. Everything else is pretty much the same, ran my 4ga for power, ran a ground, remote to 7amp ACC fuse.
All of it.


Now when I turned everything on and started turning up the volume to begin tuning the sub, I noticed a hugely distorted static or cackling at my tweeters, and both front speakers. I started diagnosing the problem at first thinking it was a bad ground. So I temporarily ran a ground directly from the battery with no change.
Now mind you, I’ll get to about 30 on the volume when this starts to kick in. At about 45 volume my factory radio just stops playing anything. Doesn’t shut off but just loses all noise and the truck has to be turned off then back on.

i unplugged the sub and disconnected all new connections. And tested to see if that was the root of my problems…. Cranked the truck back up and now I’m having the Same thing on my stock set up.


Yes I’ve adjusted the sound settings, checked connections. All of it.

so the question is. Did I just lunch my Head unit?
If so… can you explain to me how?? And what you would do moving forward?

 

Likely, yes. The Power Bass amp is the likely culprit. They aren’t known for quality control. Too low an impedance on the inputs put too much strain on the amp chip in the head unit. As you turned it up, it got too hot causing damage in the form of “static” in your front stage.

Moving forward is two parts. Replace H/U with a good aftermarket one. Pioneer, KENWOOD, Alpine etc., hit up Crutchfield. Same goes for the amp.

 

Thanks for the info.

I had tied in my right sides to behind my HU and my leg sides to my kicker panel I removed the right and no issue whatsoever now.

except that the sub isn’t getting good output but I think that just may be a bad Passover filter

 

Glad you have moved forward. Have you tuned the gain on the sub amp? Do you know what ohm impedance the Pioneer sub is?

 

Sounds like a clip.

 

At 30 on the stock H/U? Didn’t think it was that strong. Definitely a possibility though, and cheaper than mine.

 

That’s exactly what I thought! It’s wild.

but it’s sounding real good now.

It’s. 2ohm imp. As far as I’m tracking.

everything is working well though and working on tuning it now.

 

Sounded slightly different. I’m pretty familiar with clipping but this was sounding like a totally bad unit…

It was weird the only thing that was different is I tied my rights and lefts (front) together. As soon as removed it was fine

 

Oh, I didn’t catch that part. Tying R an L together changes the impedance for sure. Series would make it 2 ohms, not good on a H/U.

Do you have a voltmeter, and are you familiar with tuning an amp?

 

That’s exactly what I did with tying it together and that’s what cause that issue to begin with.
I guess I forgot to state I’m only running the sub on the amp. So when I did it only on the one side (left) it came out great and is working well.

i ended up gutting the full length of wire and running some pretty heavy duty shieldied RCAs all the way to my “tap in” point and you can definitely tell a difference.

No, I don’t know how to tune the amp with a voltmeter. I’m assuming from the sub input and don’t trim gain to not exceed a certain voltage ?

 

To get the best from the amp, calculate the required voltage by 2 numbers.

You said the sub is 2ohm, right? That’s one number.

What’s the maximum RMS wattage of the sub? That’s number 2.

Put those numbers in this table and click calculate.
https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/watt-volt-amp-calculator.html

Remember that number.

Take the voltmeter, and connect the leads to the speaker output on the amp.

Get a 50Hz test tone on JLAudio.com. Make sure it’s 0db.

Play that on repeat at the best volume without clipping.

Start the gain all the way down, and slowly turn it up until you reach that voltage number.

Connect everything back up.

Best part…crack a beer.

 

You’re a wizard.



thank you so much. I especially like the last step!