The subs will have to be rewired. You will have to take the subs out of the box they are in. Which would not be a bad idea anyway. Double check and make sure that the wires are all positive to positive and negative to negative. If they are and the subs are out of phase, then you will need to hook one sub up backwards. Basically take one sub, hook the coils together positive to positive, negative to negative, and hook that up to your amp the same way. But, take the other sub and hook the negative coils up to the positive side of the other amp channel and the positive coil up to the negative side of the other amp channel. One sub hooks normal, one backwards. Hope that makes sense. The actual subs themselves will still be wired parallel for a 2 ohm load.


Like this:


sub 1: + to + of amp - to - of amp

sub 2: + to - of amp - to + of amp

 

Make sure all its wire correct polarity, meaning, if you have a wire that needs to be on a positive, make sure its not on a negative, so to say, as Dconder explained.

HOWEVER, you might just have the polarity oposite on the amp. You might have had them wired up reverse on your old amp and not have known it, and now they are wired up normal phase. Or else had a phase switch flipped on your old amp

Try taking the pos. and neg speaker wires that hook up to your amp, and switch them....(no, you wont blow it hooking the negative to the positive, and the positive to the negative)
Or else some amps just have a button or switch you can use to change the phase...


EVERYTHING is the same as before, you just changed the amp? No settings changes, or anything like that?

 

Ok I understand what you guys are saying, but I did not change any of the wiring in the box, so if it sounded good befor, does'ent that mean it should still be right?...

I tryed switching the pos and neg on the amp, and it do not do anything...

I did not change anything but the amp. everything els is the same...

So I'm confused my new is a lot nice then my old amp, and everything but the amp is the same... so should'ent it sound atleast as good as it did befor??
or could the subs need more airspace because of the more power???

 

Airspace should not be a problem. Normally, in a sealed enclosure, it takes more power for a smaller box than for a larger box.

The only thing else I might suggest is hooking your old amp back up and see if it plays louder. If it does, then you may have something wrong with the Kicker amp. Make sure all the settings on the old amp are exactly like the ones on the Kicker or its not good comparison.

 

Well when i had my old amp hooked up it was turned all the way up, but the only things i could ajust on it was level and Hz,
And with the kicker i have 3, and i cant even turn it half way up with out thes sups sounding like crap.
I just dont get why they wont thump, it just seems like there not hiting low anuff lows....
Could it just be the subs? They say they can hadel 1000watts.... Should i just buy some better subs? or wont that sovle anything??.....
Thanks for all the help guys but this thing is just confusing the **** out of me, i need all the help i can get

 

I have skimmed through this thread and it really sounds like your polarity is crossed or you have the subs at 8ohms and not 2ohms. So you have one sub to one channel of the amp and the other to the other channel of the amp? If so when you switched the pos and neg did you switch the pos and neg for both channels? If so only switch one channel. If you can't remember how your subs were hooked up then I would for sure take them out and verify that you have the hooked up the way you think they are, you either have them at 2ohms or 8ohms. An easier check would be with a DMM. If they are at 8ohms could also make them sound less then what they were before, because then your amp would be putting out half it's power to each channel.

If your box is a single chamber then I would run the subs off the amp in bridged mode for sure, each sub wired in series so each is 8ohms and then both in parallel to get 4ohms total.. You will not notice a sound difference really. Also in bridged mode at 4ohms versus 2ohms x2, your amp will not work as hard and run a little cooler and still put out the same power. In short the lower the resistance the amp sees the harder it will work. Will you notice a sound difference, no, but will help the amp.

 

Yeah i have them both to there own channels, When i switched the pos and neg i only did it to one of them, and i did not really notice a change. So i want them to be at 2ohms? I wil take them out and see how they are wired to make sure. But if they sounded good befor, and this amp has a lot more power shouldent they still sound good, because i did not chance how they where wired?

So if i briged it would that mean i would have them both wired togeather and only have one set of wirers going to my amp??

 

Here is a link, it's the bottom pic
http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/rftec...2&woofer_imp=4

Yes only one wire to your amp, it shows you which 2 terminals on the amp to put your speaker wires in, L+ and R-.

Yes your amp should sound as good as your old one, espically since it's a better quality one. (Not trying to start a brand/quality debate here folks).

I know that other people have suggested some of these same things but here is what I would check:
1) Make sure your xover is set to LP, it will be all the way to one side
2) Set your xover freq to about 80hz, **** on top.
3) Make sure your gain, **** on the top of the amp, is not all the way down
3) Make sure your bass boost, **** on top of the amp, is not all the way down.
4) Make sure your remote bass **** is not all the way down. (I have not seen you mention this yet or I might have missed it).
5) With a DMM make sure that your speakers are for sure at 2ohms, you can leave them as they are one to each channel of the amp will be fine.
6) Check your RCA's to make sure both are connected to the amp good and also connected good at head unit. I have seen one RCA wire cause similar headache. You might try a new set of RCA's from your head unit to the amp. Doesn't have to be installed under carpet or anything, just trying to confirm that the current ones are good.
7) Check your 120amp fuse, I think in this model it's 2 60amp fuses. 99.999999% time if fuse is bad, no power. But I have seen some strange things in my days. I had one AGU fuse on an amp that metered good but would not pass current.
8) With speakers still to their own dedicated channel as you have it hooked up now, check polarity of speakers by adjusing the balance on your head unit. Turn it all the way to the right and then all the way to the left. This should shift everything to coming out of the right sub and then the left. If it sounds better from one side then the other side polarity is backwards.
9) Confirm that you have bass coming out of each sub. Remove one set of speaker wires and leave one set, make sure one sub is playing. Then disconnect that set and connect the other set that was disconnected and make sure that the other sub plays. If one sub sounds drasticlly different then you either have a amp channel problem or a sub problem. To confirm take the sub that sounded bad and put it on the other amp channel. If it sounds better then it's your amp, if it still sounds bad then it's your sub or wiring of the sub. Note: if your box is a single chamber then bass will not sound perfect because your box will be double the amount that is required.
10) Make sure your head unit is set for fader in the middle and balance in the middle.
11) What size power/ground wire do you have going to the amp again? I think I remebered seeing that you had 8ga. It should be 2ga. As for this being the problem, I doubt it but then again I'm not there to hear how much of a difference there is from the old to the new amp. This should be a quick check as well. Just run some 2ga from the battery to the amp, doesn't have to be under the carpet or anything, just run out side of your truck to get a judgment. Also don't forget to ground with 2ga as well when doing this.

Again I know that most of these you have already confirmed but from the sounds of your problem, it's typically an out of phase issue. Is this amp new or from a "buddy". If your buddy had it pushing 2 18's then he might have had the remote bass boost **** all the way down.

Hang in there you'll get it.

 

Alright thank you verry much, I will try all of these things after this weekend ( I'm geting ready to go out to the desert this weekend) so i will get back to everyone after this week end, thanks for all the help.....and i bought this amp new.... thanks

 

Probably made it worse switching only one. Try switching both.

 

well i did i tryed swiching both of them one of them, no real change

 

Well don't get any sand up your tail pipe.

Anyway if this is new the one thing that I have not seen mention is the remote bass **** and what you have it at.

 

Well i have not got a chance to try all those things yet, But I'm going to.

But i just noticed that on my old amp it has a crossover button and a bridged one, And i had both of them on.... And i reamber if i ever shut them off it sounded like crap, kindda the same way it sounds now... so what does that mean i need to do since my new amp does not have those buttons????
Thanks......

 

By “on” I will assume that means that you had the crossover on and the amp was bridged, which means running off one combined channel. Well first off this kind of contradicts what you posted earlier, because the way I read this you had your old amp bridged, meaning you “bridged” the 2 outputs of the amp in to one and both subs were running off this “bridged” channel not off of their own channel.

First things first, I would double check each sub with a meter. You should be either at 2ohms or 8ohms. If you see 4ohms then that means that you don’t have one of your voice coils hooked up. If you don’t have a meter any local car audio shop, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc…. should be able to check it for you. To me honestly they shouldn’t even try to charge for it because it will take them all of 2mins to do it and if they try then just say that you will try someone else.

Let’s start with just keeping it setup the way you think it was setup before, both subs to their own channel. This means that you want the subs to be at 2ohms and hooked up to its own channel.

You do actually have these same features on your new Kicker amp, the crossover is a switch and needs to be set to LP and the way you wire the subs to the amp will determine if it’s bridged or not. Also adjust your crossover freq on top to around 80hz for now. Your kicker amp just doesn’t have a button to let the amp know it’s in bridged mode it is inherent.

This really screams a wiring issue, either with the subs or at the amp.

 

I agree, you will know if you have your subs out of phase (meaning you have one wired backwards) if you dissconnect one of the two and it gets louder than the two together, it means the subs are fighting each other and canceling each other out.

The best way to wire this setup would be to run each speaker at an 8 ohm load ea, and wire both of the positives and both of the negatives (each 8 ohm speaker load) to the bridged side of the amp I think it is right positive and left negative. that will give you a 4 ohm bridged load and it will give you maximum output from the amp.