I just hooked up a Kenwood amp powering 1 12" sub. The rca cables are hooked into one of those little boxes that you tie into your speaker wires. Everything is working fine and sounds great, but after a little bit of listening to it cranked up, the amp gets so hot at the top of it, that you can't even keep your hand on it for more than 3 seconds. When I first noticed this, I turned it down very low, and the amp cooled off. What's the deal? I had this same setup in my previous car and it everything worked fine. It's an 800 watt amp, which I should be fine to power one 12" sub from what I've been told. What's wrong?

 

What's the impedance of the sub, and what is the impedance rating of the amp? If the sub is wired up incorrectly (say at 1ohm) and is drawing more from the amp (say the amp is only 2ohm stable), whether the amp is PLENTY powerful enough for the single woofer or not, it will cause the amp to be overworked, hence the heating that it's doing.

Derek

 

Okay... I looked online and this is what it says about the AMP....
RMS Power at 4 OHMS ... 150Wx2
RMS Power at 2 OHMS ... 230W x2.

The sub's details are Impedance Dual 4 Ω 4 Ω

 

ok, now that we have established your sub's impedance rating I have to ask what kind of amp that you are running (the model of the Kenwood), because you are showing me the ratings of the amp running two channels...does it show a rating for running a single woofer setup, or are you just using ONE of the channels and running 230 watts to the sub?

Derek

 

It's a Kenwood 7201, although I think the sub is messed up. When I was driving up to Indianapolis, I was listening to it loud and it just shut off and there was some smoke in the cab. After I turned off the raido for a while I turned it back on and it started doing a slight popping noise. I know it's not the amp, because when I got back I took the sub out and looked at the wiring in the box. Everything looked fine. Then I started pushing and pulling on the speaker cone, and it started to work again, but then I noticed smoke coming from the cone. Not sure why it would be doing that though.