kickass audio

When mine had shorted out it blasted a hole through the ring terminal and turned it green. Lol. It also blew a chunk of metal off the terminal on my cap. I can only think of how bad it would be if we didn't have fuses and shorted out a cable run. Haha

The dd-1 is the cheapest and easiest way to set the gains, plus its so damn accurate you cant beat it. My scope is good enough for what i do but if i didnt have the scope and was deciding between a scope and the dd-1 i would so hop on the dd-1 i wouldnt think twice about it.

Just to give you a little insight on what i do for ALL my power wire connections i have: 1.) I take the wire and strip the jacket off just enough so that the crimped end will have a tiny amount of wire that goes past it (usually its 1/4 of a inch) 2.) Then i take a wire brush that you use to scratch up copper pipes you solder in your house and scratch up the inside of the ring where the wire goes into it 3.) I take some soldering flux and put a good amount of it on the wire i just stripped the jacket off of and put some on the very end of the wire and slide the wire into the ring terminal 4.) I then take the wire and ring terminal and put it into a bench vice and crimp the ring around the wire as hard as i can (if you dont have a bench vice you can do the hammer trick of putting the terminal on the ground and hammering it flat, if you do it this way i do NOT recommend you use a hammer with a grooved head or do this on blacktop, do it on flat concrete if you can) 5.) Take the wire and terminal out of your bench vice and place it so that the terminal is about 3 inches from your bench vice's jaws and tighten the vice so its just holding the wires jacket nice and snug, dont clamp down on it hard!! 6.) Get a pair of long pliers you can use to assist with holding the wire up straight during the entire process and to prevent you from getting burned by the torch or hot wire/terminal 7.) I light up my propane (mapp gas will work too but do this in a well ventilated area) torch and then hold the flame onto the end of the ring terminal for a minute to get the ring and part of the wire heated up, once it starts to get hot i grab my lead free solder and put it right onto where the opening is in the ring like you see in the vids above and i do this until i can see the solder falling down past the ring terminal. I also when i see the solder going past the ring terminal i like to wrap it up by taking the solder and putting a quick line of it across the joint on the terminal to make sure that cant split open at all. 8.) I take the wire out of the bench vice with the pliers you used to hold the wire up straight in the vice and take the wire out of the bench vice 9.) I then soak the terminal under cold water for a second or two until it stops hissing from the water hitting it. 10.) The wire will still be hot so i let it sit on a concrete floor to cool off for a few minutes then i put the rubber boot on the wire and install the wire. It sounds like a lot i know but its not as hard as it sounds. Basically when you solder just do it like i provided in the steps or like in the videos above. Its personal preference how you want to approach it to be honest. Some people like to crimp their ring terminal, others just solder them on the wire. The only reason i crimp mine is to have the extra insurance that if the solder doesnt stick the wire will still be held into place and not come loose. Also as a little tip when you solder you want the solder to have a nice and shiny or almost mirror finish to it. If when you solder and it is a dull type of finish you arent applying enough heat to the wire/terminal and need to stop putting the solder onto it and heat the area up some more then continue soldering. This is what is called as a cold solder connection and they increase your resistance in your power wire and are very bad to have in any system. If i were you and this is your first time soldering see if you can get some cheap wire like 8ga or something and play around with soldering it. You cannot solder large wires with a soldering gun, it just wont put out the heat needed to get the entire wire bundle or connector hot to melt the solder into it uniformly. edit to 412 cvx: the solder pellets are good to use but are sometimes a pain to use because if for example you solder your wire with pellets and place 3 pellets on the top of the opening for the terminal it will usually melt the pellets before it has any chance to seep into the wire and it will make the solder melt and go on the outside of the terminal instead. I prefer to just get a long spool of solder and feed that onto the surface i am soldering and be done with it. Pellets are a matter of knowing how many pellets will be enough to produce the amount of solder you need.

Like Ray said you are perfectly fine. As long as you didnt short out the battery for like a minute or two it will be perfectly fine. I accidentally shorted out my s3400 battery on my old car when my stupid capacitor had a loose wire and moved down and grounded itself out for a second. I am still using that battery to this day and the arc occurred 2+ years ago and the battery runs nice and strong.

ok, so i have the headlights back on my truck and so far they look like they are not coming apart anytime soon with that windo-weld i used. The only problem i have is my one projector managed to get itself off level. My driver side projector is nice and level for the cutoff however my passenger side projector is leaning down toward the right and looks like total garbage if you ask me. Since the lights are sealed up and i can not have any way to get it torn apart to re-adjust the leveling on them does anyone have anything i can try to level it? I would take the back part of the projector out and turn it slightly from the rear where the bulb goes in but im afraid of backing it off too far and getting the damn thing to start wobbling around or to make it loose in the housing. What i thought of doing was to remove the bulb and getting some long pliers and get into the back of the projector and attempt to turn the entire projector just enough to make the cutoff level again but im afraid of snapping the projector housing my light came with (not the projector from futurevision since it is so damn strong and well built) or making the nut back off even though i have the back plate on it tightly so it shouldnt back off the nut. Does anyone have any suggestions on what i can try to get it level? I really am going to kick my self in the ass for it because the light that is not level is the one that has a half broken front clip on my truck since the previous owner hit that side into a wall or something and cracked the front clip that holds the headlights, grille, and part of my bumper on so i have to play for 15 minutes just to get the damn headlight locked in place. Also sorry to make this old post back up to the top, i figured it would be kinda stupid to make a new post just for this. Thanks!!!

no problem man. As long as you dont play too low of a tone on the speaker or ramp up the power to an ungodly amount you shouldnt have any problems with it. It prob just has some crap in there or has the slight risk that the coil is rubbing in there, you never can truly know until your playing around with things to try and fix it.

i wouldnt blow any air into it. It will make anything that may have fallen into the coil gap go further into the gap and get stuck at the bottom of the magnet. Like i said, if you can try to either gently turn the pole holding your tweeter on the speaker or pull it off do that and get inside where the coil is for your midrange driver. If you cant id just try to get something like painters tape and roll it up in a circle and put it in there one side at a time to get the sticky side to grab onto anything in there and take it out. The one my dad has does not have a bad coil, just a ton of crap in the gap area which i was able to get to fall out from slamming on them with my new 4 channel amp. lmao

it could be something inside where the coil gap is or a blown coil. My solox was like that when it was blown, at low volumes i could hear that damn coil rubbing on the pole piece like all hell but when i cranked it up on its last few minutes of life i didnt hear it. I also have a set of 6.5" my dad got that are the same type of design as your 6x9. His has small fragments of glass and metal in where the coil gap is since it was ripped out of a car that was in a collision. I tried to clean it out with some tape but it still has some in there. One thing i did to try and help it was to push on the cone from side to side to make the inside of the coil rub on the gap and then rotate sides until the scraping would stop. You could keep railing on it but i wouldnt recommend it. If it was me id see if you can get some tape wedged in the gap area and pick anything out of there because you may have something in there. If it comes out clean then try to push GENTLY and rock the cone from side to side to see if you can get any dirt out of the area. If you can remove the center piece that is holding your tweeter on take that out and look down in there to see if theres any crap in there.

sounds like it or maybe it cracked loose a little bit. It could have just cracked loose or may have had a cold solder connection.

do you happen to have each coil on the sub wired to an independent bolt somewhere on the box? I did that with my sub and it is a hell of a lot easier to swap the sub from series to parallel without taking the sub out, plus i can troubleshoot it a lot easier too. If you have it set like this with each terminal of the sub going to its own bolt or wire on the box then just troubleshoot it from there.

it may be because you had it for so long, when i got the email i had 3 vids up and they were short stupid videos of my old system. I believe my account was opened for 3+ years now and i only had videos on it for a little shy of a year at the time, i think its just for how long you have your youtube account and if theres any vids in it or something.

how long have you had your youtube account? i got an email sent to my gmail about adsense and i only have like 5-6 some odd videos on my youtube and they dont have very high view ratings and i was shocked when i got it. Plus dont expect to make a whole lot of money, its pennies if that unless the person clicks on the ad and goes to the site then you make a little more.

Just to double check im sure you are smart enough to notice this though, but are you reading it with the amps off? I tried to read mine once with absolutely no sound going through and i forgot my headunit was still on and my resistance was fluctuating quite a bit until i shut it off completely and it read like normal. One thing you can try to do would be to measure each coil independent from each other to see if any coils have a problem, then hook each sub up in series but keep them seperate from eachother for the moment and see what they read. Each sub should read about 2 ohms when its wired in series and NOT connected to the other sub. If it does then repeat this to the other sub and see what it does. I had this problem before and i just brushed it off like its nothing and later in the day after i played them for a little it somehow fixed itself and my resistance was back to normal.

100 amp seems a little too much for 4ga wire, I'd get it down to 80 max, 60 would be best but 80 would be fine. The fuse serves two purposes, to blow when it is shorted out (touching the ground of your vehicle) or when you draw more current thsn the wire can handle safely. That's what all fuses are made for, short circuits and over powering. Edit: what kind of fuse holder is it? Is it an anl, agu, midi, etc.? Also do you have a reducer on the inputs of the fuse holder? A loose connection can cause a ton of heat.

oh dear god that really scares me that you just said that!!!! You can exceed the power capability of a wire when you draw more current than it is intended to carry. This is why they make fuses. Fuses blow and stop the electricity from flowing on the wire when you exceed the threshold that the wire can allow current to travel before it heats up/melts/catches on fire. For example if i were to run 4 gauge wire to my dc 5.0k it would fry in a second because my 5k draws over 300 amps of current and 4ga is made to be at most 80 amps. The 80 amps is basically the red zone of the current the wire can carry before it starts to produce heat and melt the sheathing and catch on fire. It would be very wise to let us know what gauge wire your power wire is and what fuse you have for safety reasons.

Sounds like you are heating up the fuse holder and melting the fuse block. When you bump your music does the power wire/fuse holder get warm at all? If it does then you either have resistance in the line or are exceeding the power capability of that power wire.

Sorry man i read someone else on here that got a kinetik for real cheap but it was resting at 8 volts or something extremely low. Nevermind then. lol

You can get a high to low converter but most ones i have found are crap. I would get one that is also a sound processor too. My 3sixty.2 has the high level input and outputs rca's and i used it playing around with my home theater system in my room and it sounded great through it. I helped another guy on here with a high/low converter which would clip at any level he set it at but he got a high/low converter that was also a soundprocessor/eq and it worked great for him. His dd-1 didnt find any distortion till he turned up the gain where his old high/low converter had distortion at all volume levels. If you really want a clear sounding system with a ton of great control i always recommend something like the rockford fosgate 3sixty.2 (and soon enough the .3) as they are great tools to have when you install a system whether keeping the headunit stock or aftermarket.

dont get an o-scope, a dd-1 is cheaper and more accurate. I would get a dd-1 if i didnt have my scope but im perfectly fine with how mine are set with the scope. I havent done anything wrong with my system other than popping off the dustcap on my smd but i glued that back on and its not moving at all. lol. I learned that whole under powering thing with my old solox sub i had. I fed it 1400w rms at 4 ohms and it barely got it moving and it was far from being loud but that damn thing got hotter than hell and smelled a ton. I eventually wound up burning the coil on it for good and it quit on me. I always recommend to save your time and money and do it right the first time. Trust me, i learned this the hard way. I blew well over half the cost of my current system blowing up subs, amps, burning wire, etc because i couldnt afford the good stuff at the time and quite honestly didnt know crap about it then like i do now so it made me waste a damn hefty amount of money on things im just throwing out to the curb. Its like i tell everyone i help on here, take my advice because i have learned a lot of good things from the expensive mistakes i have made with my system and a ton of other things i work on.

if only i didnt have the 3sixty.2, i would LOVE to have this. Steve, do you, Tony, or Juan have any room for me to live over there? Ill live in the storage space if you want. haha. Looks nice man cant wait to see it come out, im sure everyone will hop on this like the dd-1.

as previously mentioned it will not get that btl to move at all, it will play the frequency but wont hit at all. you also can really cook a sub if it isnt moving and you clip it. I have seen this with my SMD. If i play a clipped song at full tilt it barely gets warm and doesnt smell but if i play it at a lower volume but its still clipped a little, it gets even hotter. The reason for this is because the sub uses the high excursion to cool off the coil and inner parts of the subwoofer. The more excursion, the more air flow it produces, the more air flow it produces the cooler the coil will be and the more power you can toss at it. I have 5kw of clean power going to a single SMD 18 sub and as long as i dont clip it, it stays perfectly cool and does not smell. I have had the sub for a few months and it handles the abuse im giving it like a champ.

I always have seen when the diodes go on an alt you have a ton of flickering with your lights at all rpm's or a slightly varying voltage, his is too drastic to be a diode calling it quits. It may be a bad brush or winding in it. One thing you can do to check up on your alt would be to take off your belt for it and rock the pulley on it from the top and bottom and left and right side. If the pulley seems to wobble a little your bearing on the alt is bad and you need either a new alt or new bearing, id just get a new bearing depending on how old the alt is. Also since it isnt very clear, what happens when you are at idle or in a complete stop and your engine is idling slowly and your voltage is in the 12v range but you slowly rev up the engine? Does it slowly go back up or does it take a ton of gas to make it raise? I had a problem with my first alt from mechman where it charged great at idle but was super loud and whenever my rpm's exceeded 2000 the alt would turn off and stop charging and i would be running straight off battery power until i let off the gas to a little below 2000 rpm's and it charged back up. Id start by checking your connections and making sure they arent corroded or loose, check the alts temperature when the engine is cold (preferably let the engine sit overnight and turn it on, let it idle for awhile and see if the alt gets super hot or if it stays fairly cool) alts do get hot when they are loaded down or the engine bay gets really hot but shouldnt get hot after 5 minutes of idling with little to no current draw. Im personally thinking your alt is bad and needs replacing.

that kind of line driver is good, i was meaning that the ones that are super small and just plug into the rca itself and dont get any power to operate it are garbage.

I highly advise against line drivers unless you buy a high quality one. Line drivers are nothing but distortion unless you spend some bucks and get a good one or get a sound processor like i have which is also a line driver too.

Are you talking to me about helping the one guy figure out what he had going on with his line driver distorting to all hell or something else? Im totally confused. lol