[nhs42064]

I have a bazooka ELA1300 - 1 x 300 Watt Amplifier and a kicker zx400.1 (which puts out 400 watts) and one set of eclipse SW6210 subwoofers, I had the subs hooked up to the one kicker amp but obviously the kicker was not enough power for the subs seeing as the run on 500 watts rms. My question is can I pair the two amps together to get enough power? If so can you please tell me step by step how to do it, some people have told me that I could just hook up each amp the subs as if that one amp was going to power it would that really work or would it just blow my amps

[Stratmando]

What is the Impeadance of the Amp and the Speakers.(2,4,8?)

[DanielF]

Not only would I not advise hooking two amps to one speaker (you could do serious damage), but it's actually unnecessary!

The '500Wrms' is the speaker's maximum rating (limit), not what it 'needs' to produce a sound. A speaker 'needs' only as much power input as you want to give it to get the loudness you're after (up to its limit, of course). You can produce an audible sound from a 500W (limit) speaker using a 1W amplifier!

The other reason why you don't want to do this is that you wouldn't hear the difference! The difference between 400W (your amp's max output) and 500W (the speaker's limit) is less than 1 decibel (1 dB), which is a barely audible difference!

Your woofer has dual (4 ohm) voice coils but your Kicker amp is mono (2 ohms). Just hook up both voice coils in parallel (plus to plus, minus to minus), connect the pair to your Kicker's single output, and you'll be getting the best you can from your gear.

Daniel

[nhs42064]

Actually the 500wrms is not the maximum the maximum rated watts is 1100, and the impedance is 4

[nhs42064]

The impedance of the subs is 4 rather

[nhs42064]

And daniel I had the subs running parallel but they kept shutting off my amp due to drawing too much power

[Stratmando]

Running in parallel halfs the Impedance, 2 4 ohm speakers in parallel is 2 ohms, parallel 2 more speakers, will load down to 1 ohm, Too much Impeadance(resistance) can over load the amp.
You can have 4 speakers of equal Impedance and wire a Series/Parallel configuration, then the Amp would see Impeadance of 1 speaker(8 ohms).
And 4 8 ohm speakers would equal 8 ohms.

[DanielF]

What Stratmando meant to say was too little impedance (too low) can overload the amp. But your two 4 ohm voicecoils in parallel make 2 ohms, and your amp is rated to drive 2 ohms, so it should be OK. If the amp is shutting down on overload (you could have saved a lot of toing-and-froing by telling us that in the first place!), either the amp is faulty or (more likely) you're overdriving it (turning the volume too far up).

Daniel

[nhs42064]

So what can I do to fix this problem? Could I run one amp to one speaker and the other to another speaker?

[DanielF]

You could buy a second woofer and hook it up to your bazooka amp, but considering the expense of another woofer, I think you would be most unsatisfied. This would add only 2.4dB to your bass output, which while noticeable, is not a big increase in volume.

To advise on alternative strategies is a bit tricky as (a) I don't know how you have your amps hooked up to the rest of your car system, and (b) I don't know what your expectations are in terms of bass volume.

From my point of view, if your system is hooked up correctly and working to its capacity, I would be quite satisfied with 400W of bass power inside a car. But for all I know you might be a youngster wanting to build a 'doof doof' system that will annoy the hell out of anyone within a block's radius of your car! :)

Before spending any more money, you need to establish whether your kicker amp is delivering its full 400W before its overload trips. This is difficult to do without electronic instruments and knowledge. You could take it to a car audio specialist, and they could probably check it for you pretty easily (and maybe free if they thought you might be a potential customer for more equipment ;)).

If you're not getting the full output before it trips, it may be the way you have hooked it up or the way you're using it (e.g. you might have the preamp inputs connected to your receiver's speaker outputs, or you might have the bass boost turned up to maximum at loud volume). It could also be a fault in the amp. Again, the specialists should be able to advise you on this.

But if it is delivering 400W without overloading, then you obviously want a much louder bass sound, and that's going to be expensive. You need to understand that human perception of loudness is a logarithmic function (that's why we measure loudness and power with decibels [dB], a logarithmic ratio). To get what you would perceive as a doubling of loudness, you need a 10dB increase in amplifier power [and the speaker(s) also need to be rated to take that!], which means increasing the amp power by a factor of 10! So if you're getting your full 400W without overload, and you want something twice as loud, you will need a 4000W (4kW) amp! :eek:

Daniel

[nhs42064]

Hmmm so basically my question is a no go then huh? I can't wire each amp to the subs that will cause damage to the amps?
I would have thought that if done correctly I would have been able to do it and get 700 watts out of the amps.

[DanielF]

if done correctly

There is no 'correct' way to wire two dissimilar amps in parallel, unfortunately. Identical amps with identical gain (volume) settings driven from the same signal, yes, but different amps with different gains - you're asking for trouble. And even with identical amps in parallel, you still don't get any more power output unless you also halve the load impedance (e.g. with two woofers in parallel), because the output voltage from the parallel amps is unchanged - only the current capacity is doubled by paralleling them!

You could, of course, wire each of your two amps to separate voicecoils of your dual-voicecoil woofer, but you'd be worse of than paralleling the voicecoils to just the Kicker amp. Why? Because then each amp would be loaded with 4 ohms, and thus deliver only half its maximum power (check the Kicker spec: 400W into 2 ohms, 200W into 4 ohms). So you'd then only have 350W maximum (200+150) instead of the full 400 from the Kicker alone.

So, yes, sorry, you're stuck with the sound you have unless you fork out for a more powerful amp and speaker.

Daniel

[nhs42064]

OK well thank you guys I appreciate the help if you ever have a question that I have knoweledge about ill be sure to return the favor