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Im not sure if my head unit or my amp is shot. Any ideas?

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Old 10-29-2013, 07:54 PM
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Default Im not sure if my head unit or my amp is shot. Any ideas?

01 Police Electraglide

I have a Kenwood KIV bt900. I have a sounstream amp 520.4. A few weeks ago we had about 2hrs of rain on my way back from GA. On my way home my 6.5s went out. I finally had an opportunity to do some testing. While playing music off of my jump drive i get sound out of my tweets which are connected to the fronts on the head unit. I have the amp on the rear RCAs of the radio. No sound out of the 6.5s. I moved the RCAs to the front set of the head units. No Sound. Sub woofer RCAs, no sound. I put a meter on the RCAs each set of RCAs while the music is playing and i got from .4-.7VAC. Since music should be best read with a oscilloscope, im not sure if my readings are correct or not.

I put a multimeter to the amp power and accessory. Got power. Power is good on the amp. The crossover setting for the 6.5s is on the full switch.

Checked the speaker output at the speaker lugs, it wasn't warm in my hands. What voltage should i be reading at the speakers? AC voltage right?Have you ever heard of both of them going out at the same time? Got some focal ic65.

If there is more to it and im missing something holla at me. Im unofficially down for the winter. (AKA- got too much to do with it before i put it back on the road)
 
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Old 10-29-2013, 08:13 PM
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OK, lets get this straight.

Tweeters hooked up to the speaker outputs - sound.

Amp hooked up to any RCA - no sound.

You mention the jump drive. Do you get full sound out of the radio, or does the problem exist no matter the music source?

If it exists over all sources, it points to either all three sets of RCA's as bad or the amp. Do you still have the harness for the high level inputs? If you hook the speaker out from the radio to the high input to the amp and you don't have sound, you have a bad amp. Sound, you have bad RCA outs from the radio.
 
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Old 10-29-2013, 08:34 PM
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So attach these three wires. High level wire, speaker wire, and the wire coming out of the radio. In their perspective sequence of course.
 
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Old 10-30-2013, 06:51 AM
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Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
01 Police Electraglide

I have a Kenwood KIV bt900. I have a sounstream amp 520.4. A few weeks ago we had about 2hrs of rain on my way back from GA. On my way home my 6.5s went out. I finally had an opportunity to do some testing.
take charge kinda guy.. good for you!

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
While playing music off of my jump drive i get sound out of my tweets which are connected to the fronts on the head unit.
this tells you the head unit speaker level outputs are good.

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
I have the amp on the rear RCAs of the radio. No sound out of the 6.5s. I moved the RCAs to the front set of the head units. No Sound. Sub woofer RCAs, no sound.
is the amp getting power? Is the green light on? is the protection light on?

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
I put a meter on the RCAs each set of RCAs while the music is playing and i got from .4-.7VAC. Since music should be best read with a oscilloscope, im not sure if my readings are correct or not.
if you're referring to the head unit RCA outputs then that's not a good sign. Your AC volts should fluctuate with the music and won't be anywhere near an .xx reading but more along the lines (depending on volume) of between 1 and 5v (again depending on the rated voltage of the outputs)

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
I put a multimeter to the amp power and accessory. Got power. Power is good on the amp. The crossover setting for the 6.5s is on the full switch.
see # 3 above

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
Checked the speaker output at the speaker lugs, it wasn't warm in my hands.
this really won't tell you anything

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
What voltage should i be reading at the speakers? AC voltage right?
you should be reading up to 28VAC here. Maybe slightly higher depending on the head unit.

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
Have you ever heard of both of them going out at the same time? Got some focal ic65.
i doubt this is your speakers and an easy way to test that would be connect one of your speakers to the same wires your tweeters are connected to. You should get sound if the speakers are good.

Originally Posted by ThaGlyde
If there is more to it and im missing something holla at me. Im unofficially down for the winter. (AKA- got too much to do with it before i put it back on the road)
you're on the right track, just need to isolate the issue.


Look in the stickys above on how to set gains. There is a 1000hz test tone in there. Burn that to a CD. Disconnect ALL speakers from your head unit and disconnect RCAs from head unit to amp. Drop the CD in, and turn the volume up. You should get a constant voltage output on the RCAs. If you don't or it's still hovering at the measurements above, the preamp stage of the head unit is toast. If you get a good solid constant voltage up to rated output of RCAs, then your head unit is ok and you need to move to the amp. Turn everything off, disconnect your speaker wires from the amp, plug in your RCAs from the head unit to amp and then turn it back on and test for AC voltage on the outputs of the amp. Again you should get a fairly constant voltage output here up to about 28vac.
 
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