what mistakes did you guys make when you installed your first system???

[Nikitaaa]

had a freind showing me the ropes so didnt make a lot of mistakes.

we set the gain by ear on 3-4 amps by ear, the t400.4 i just installed was first set by ear but a member on here helped me out with a dd-1. my by ear was close but any distortion is bad distortion.

A tiny bit of distortion never hurt anyone!

Okay.. maybe a few people..

ive heard/read that a small amount of distortion can be a benifit in spl. but knowone ever said it was good for speakers.

Yup that's very true but sooner rather than later you get diminishing effects.

It's harder than you might assume though to make sure you don't have any clipping at all though..

You'd have to check the song, source unit, etc etc etc.

[armykyle1]

kept adding instead of just saving for a big build

[diegoclass2010]

i was 15 at the time and was trying to use a high/low converter so i dint had to change the stock head unit... had a bad high/low converter that i couldn't make it work long story short i had my brother come and help since he had more experience and we both trying every possible connection and i me everything to the point we hooked up the speaker wires from the stock head unit to the amp output, we burnt my malibu 2008 stock head unit

[Hellbilly429]

Walmart, Best Buy, power wire thro the door jam, learning from someone who can't keep their own stereo working for more than a week, spending $ on used shit, twist and tape method, thinking "Max" rating was important, too small gauge wire, pieced together wires, bad crimps, no lugs, you name it I done it wrong. In my defense I had noone around me to teach me anything, still don't, been learning everything thro online research and forums like this.

Oh, and don't ever take anyone's word for it, always question and research cause chances are that person is full of shit.

[Herokight]

Wrong size power wire, not protecting the wire when I ran it under the car, bad grounds, not disconnecting the battery before I cut the old radio harness off (those popped fuses were a bitch to find too), was in a rush and messed up my rear deck and had to fix it.... I'm probably missing some things but that's the big things I messed up.

Edit - Oh, and ghetto crimps.

[zxsonnyxz]

Started building in a car that was too far gone..

Other than that I don't think I've done any serious mistakes, yet...

[TS2GFrank]

Bought two Northstar Group 22 batteries and wired them to my amp but didn't wire them with my battery front. After about a week I started to wonder why my system would lose its nuts after about 10mins of playtime lol

[RCP Audio]

ouch hahahaha

photo from my build log

i have come far since lol

[Krakin]

Clipped the hell out of my first twelve. Thought "must have been a bad sub." So through in the second one and then it blew. Then I was bassless for a long time while I sat here reading through all I could.

[Noobtastic14]

The second time I wired up woofers I misread the "in series" diagram.

Live and learn.

-Drew