i have a pioneer deh-p 5900 head unit, with two 10'' shallow mount pioneer subs hooked up to a Kicker ZX400.1 amp. When i first installed everything it sounded and worked great! but for the last couple of weeks im having a big problem. there is a green light on the amp, when it is lit everything works fine. but in the middle of songs it will turn red and the subs will not hit? Its driving me crazy! Every song i listen to the bass will be hitting then all the sudden i just dont hear any bass at all, i look at the amp and that red protection light is on. I regrounded the ground wire and checked the connections to the subs. does anybody have a clue what could be wrong? ive adjusted all the ***** on the amp and nothing works. any help is greatly appreciated

 

What impedence are you running the subs at? You could be running that amp at too low of an impedence...

 

my subs are 4 ohms and my amp says 2 ohms, so i parallally wired my subs to my amp. so i think i did that right. anything else?

 

come on somebody here has got to know.

 

According to the online manaul, the amp has three types of protection: thermal, voltage, and short circuit. Thermal for when the amp gets too hot, voltage when your voltage is not in the 9-16 volt range, and short circuit when speaker wires may be shorted, damaged speakers or too low impendence load. Sound like your problem should be falling in the short circuit so if you have a multimeter, I would first check the subs to make sure they are indeed 4 ohm each and 2 ohm final load. Also double check the speaker wires to make sure there is not a bare spot that could be shorted out. I would also check the voltage when bumping hard to see that you are getting enough juice. None of that may work but, you can at least eliminate the obvious.

 

im almost positive its thermal because somtimes the amp would get really hot and start to smell like smoke! how do i fix this or is it ruined. thanks for the help man

 

Where do you have the amp mounted?

 

the box is underneath my seat, and the amp is mounted to the box, if you were sitting in the back leftside of the seat the amp would be where your calves are. do you get what im saying?

 

So the amp faces out from under the rear seats? When the music shuts off, the amp is very hot? If the amp has good air flow for ventilation, I would still check the voltage on the amp to make sure its ok but, if good air flow and proper voltage and the amp is still going in to thermal protect, could be an amp problem.

 

Your amp may be on its way out. If your amp is 2-channel and you have 2 sub speakers, then connect 1 speaker per channel. Do not parallel the connections even though the amp says 2 Ohm. Thermal issues are most attributable to too much current. You get too much current from low resistance with parallel speaker connections ......or correct resistance, but high volume. The real question is whether your amp will last. Try re-connecting the speakers and see if that helps. If not, note whether the condition happens sooner or later. It may be likely that the amp is toast.

 

The Kicker ZX400.1 is a mono amp that is 2 ohm stable. Should not be a problem to connect two 4 ohm subs in parallel.

 

X2!

Get a DMM and check to see what your final load is shown to the amp. Maybe you paralleled the speakers wrong by accident.

Being that the amp gets very hot and smells of smoke seems to be something different though.

Let us know, and we can se if we can help out more.
Devildog101