Kicker L7 Melted Voice Coil
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Last weekend installed a Kenwood Excelon KAC-x810D in my girlfriends cougar.
It worked fine for a few days, and then on her way home to the twin cities, the sub stopped working, it filled the car with smoke, but it didnt sound distored or produce any crazy sounds beforehand...
Anyway she took it to best buy, and apparently the voice coil melted...
The gain wasn't set high, it wasn't even 1/2 up, she wasn't bumping it hardcore or anything, just normal volume... so does anybody have any ideas on why it melted? The max output of the amp @ 4ohms was 400w RMS... the sub should be able to handle 750w RMS...
Am I missing something here? Thanks
Here are the specs on the amp:
The KAC-X810D delivers a gigantic 1,600 (yes, sixteen-hundred) watts of maximum output power (at a stable 1Ohm), and features Kenwood's Bass Management System for precise tailoring of the frequencies sent to your sub.
400 watts RMS x 1 at 4 ohms
800 watts RMS x 1 at 2 ohms
1,000 watts RMS x 1 at 1 ohmThe Sub is a Kicker L7 DVC 4 ohm
1500w Peak
750w RMS -
Sounds like a manu. defect to me. I seen it from time to time on the old L7's when I used to sell them but I thought they cleared that up. Maybe not. But usually it happened from alot of distortion rather than overpowering it. iAlot of inuadible distortion will kill a sub far before overpowering it will.
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I set the gains, it was not distorting when it left my hands....I'm going with the "whoops, kicker fucked up theory"...like Jim said, gain wasn't even at 1/2 when it went.
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distortion is caused many times by turning the gain up too high on an amplifier You can tell by the sub not sounding correct...you know...the farty, floppy, non-linear sound.. The only thing I'm kinda curious about is that Kicker rates the L7 @ 750 RMS...but that is probably for a sealed enclosure. I'm not sure what kind of power that they handle in the factory prefab ported enclosures. It might be less. The only other thing I can think of that might have caused it to blow was by having too much power going below the F3 point of the sub (....way below...like say 20 Hz) and the sub getting very non-linear but not really being able to hear it since humans have a hard time hearing below 25 Hz or so... Then again, not much music is recorded at 20 Hz either....I dunno...
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Kicker still had some issues with those subs. Not alot, but some nonetheless. But, if Chuck set the gains, then I have no doubt that it's in the sub itself. As far as distortion goes, Most of it is inaudible and next to impossible to detect with our ears on low frequencies. (especially in a trunk or with a bandpass enclosure. If it didn't sound like it was overextending, (you'd hear that). Then it's probably not distortion that killed the sub. I'm not going to tell you not to buy Kicker either. On the contrary, I really like their subwoofers myself and would use them.
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Well called up Kicker, they wont replace anything over a year old, I mean can't blame them.
The Sub has been powered by a tiny MTX D class amp for quite a while, just this weekend is when we hooked up something with big power...
Theres a few companies who sell the 02-03 model Kicker L7's still...
If not, then theres the option of purchasing a new L7 so I dont have to buy a box, or there is a deal on 3 - 10" MTX subs...
I just don't want to spend the money to buy another L7 and have it go up in smoke...
What would you guys do?
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Site on sound huh....didnt joe get his stuff from site on sound and his car almost burnt up?!?!....was any of the wire melted or anything jim?
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some kid was sayin that bass songs start L7s on fire but my guess hes full of shit but idk
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hey I didn't read all the posts but I had the same thing happen to a kicker amp I had, the amp was turned off from the deck and I heard a pop and smoke came out of it. site on sound didn't know what went wrong but I got a new amp all the same. I know kicker is not very good with handling OHM changes. I had lost of problems with that. They work awsome if you get the amp matched to the sub on settings(ohm load)
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lord_deastofact wrote:
I know kicker is not very good with handling OHM changes. I had lost of problems with that. They work awsome if you get the amp matched to the sub on settings(ohm load)Then from the sounds of it they don't like speakers as they are a reactive load whose impedance varies drastically from one frequency to the next (not uncommon to see a load change from 3.3 ohms to 24 ohms within the same octave)
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tjamz wrote:
Then from the sounds of it they don't like speakers as they are a reactive load whose impedance varies drastically from one frequency to the next (not uncommon to see a load change from 3.3 ohms to 24 ohms within the same octave)Exactly what I was going to say. Take a multi meter and hook it up to each of the speaker terminals, then move the speaker cone up and down manually. Look at the fluctuation in resistance.
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