Alright, story time. So, a couple of days ago I decided that the amp that I was using to power my 12" Memphis sub was not good enough, so I went and bought myself a new 500w Memphis amp. Well fast forward to today and I am driving along, enjoying the way my sub sounds with my new amp, and suddenly the sub quits working. I think "great, I guess I blew a fuse or something, i'll check it out when I get home." Soon after that, I start to smell smoke, naturally, this gets my attention. So I pull over and open the back driver side door to check my amp, the power light was still on and it seemed to be working fine. So I go and open the rear hatch and there is smoke coming out of the ports of my box?! Of course, my first response is to scream profanaties, and after that I immediately un plugged the sub from the amp, and pulled the fuse that powers the amp. I am assuming the sub will need to be replaced, by before I do that I want to know why this happened so I can make sure it does not happen in the future, so anyone know what I did wrong?

Here are the links to the sub and amp:
Sub (http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_10314_Memphis+15-PR12D4.html)
Amp (http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_9927_Memphis+16-PR1.500.html?gclid=CLXjrMKCkZYCFQOcFQod9n45EQ)

Sorry to hear about that!

Dont really know much about sub and amps and the wiring for those.

Hopefully others will chime in for ya!

Too much juice going to the subs? Maybe adjust the amp?

Man that sux..

Post a pic or little drawing of how you wired it up, so we can help you figure it out.

Here is a little diagram of how it is wired. The ground might go all the way to the battery, I can't remember, but I do remember that it is grounded well.

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o73/glazener24/SystemHookUp.jpg

Everything worked flawlessly until I got that new amp, which makes me think that James is right and I just need to turn down the amp.

sounds like either the amp put out too much power for the sub, or the wires connecting the terminals of the box to the sub werent rated high enough to run the power thru.

try taking the sub speaker out of the box and touching it to the am(wiring it of course, just knowing that the wires can handle the power), see if the sub still works. cause it could just be the wires. or it could have fried the speaker too.

or the wires connecting the terminals of the box to the sub werent rated high enough to run the power thru.

Hmm, I never thought about that, i'll check into that tomorrow for sure. What gauge wires would I need? I salvaged the wires from my old 10's so I guess that could be it.

I had a full memphis system in one of my civics and IIRC, Memphis guarantees their stuff for life so you should be able to get a replacement at no cost. At least that's what the guys who did my system told me. They were Memphis distributors and said if I ever blew a speaker or shorted one out, that I could bring it back and get a brand new one at no charge.

THE SUB STILL WORKS! I don't know how, but it does! I turned down every setting on my amp, no smoke, and the speaker doesn't sound blown!

That's good! I'm glad it still works.

What ohms do you have it running at? If you are running it to low, the amp might be clipping and sending strait DC to the woofer.

It looks like you over powered your speaker.

RMS (continuous) power is more significant that "peak" numbers. Your amp is running at 500 watts RMS and your speaker is rated to handle 250 watts. That's pretty much why you fried your amp. Though remember, over powering your speaker is always better than under powering it. But, in this case, you doubled your power :D

My advice is to get a speaker that has 500 watts RMS at the upper end of its power rating. Hope this helps!


EDIT: Glad to hear that it works, but if you crank your amp again...you might smoke the Subs ;)

I agree with Keys. I would get a sub that can handle a bit more power. Otherwise I think you will run into the same problem again.

Any suggestions on subs? I'd like to stick with Memphis if I can...

To be honest, I've never heard of Memphis...then again, I've been pretty sheltered when it comes to different brands.

I'm a total fan of what I have, which is a Kicker Solo-Baric.

That's weird, all the shops around here sell Memphis.

So now I am confused, this (http://cgi.ebay.com/MEMPHIS-AUDIO-15-PR12D4-12-500W-CAR-SUBWOOFER-SUB-NEW_W0QQitemZ190253282099QQihZ009QQcategoryZ18805Q QcmdZViewItem) is the same sub I have and it says that it is a 500w sub. Now i've never really understood how all of that RMS power and stuff actually means, but why would this sub not work with my amp?

RMS= continueous power. You want to try and match your amps RMS rating to your subs RMS rating. Now I can really confuse you by going into the ohms but I won't...lol If you look around online you can probably find a diagram of how to wire it up or some one here may have one. You could always email the manufacturer http://www.memphiscaraudio.com/ and see what they say. Hope that helps...

Power Handling (RMS)
The maximum continuous sine wave power that can be dissipated by a speaker without failure, measured in watts RMS. Most speakers fail for one of two main reasons:

1)A speaker is driven with too much power, beyond its rating, and it overheats.
2)The amplifier is driven into clipping, producing square wave distortion that destroys the driver.

Clipping
Clipping occurs when an amplifier is asked to deliver more current to a speaker than the amp is capable of doing. When an amplifier clips, it literally cuts off the tops and bottoms of the musical waveforms that it's trying to reproduce, thus the term. This introduces a huge amount of distortion into the output signal. Clipping can be heard as a crunching sound on musical peaks.

Ohm
The unit of measurement for impedance or resistance. It tells you how much a device will resist the flow of current. If you take two signals of exactly the same strength and send one to a 4-ohm speaker and the other to an 8-ohm speaker, twice as much current will flow through the 4-ohm speaker. In other words, the 8-ohm speaker will require twice as much power (wattage) to play at the same volume.

Impedance
The total opposition to the flow of alternating current in an electrical circuit at a given frequency. Impedance is measured in Ohms. Although car audio manufacturers label the impedance of most car speakers and subs at 4-ohms, the impedance of a speaker is actually not a constant. It's actual impedance changes with frequency and can vary greatly. Therefore, though 4-ohms is the standard impedance in car audio, this standard is more of an average impedance for speakers and amplifiers when driven within the part of the audio spectrum for which they are designed.

Post some good pics of your wiring so we can figure out if it's an impedance issue. Like I said earlier, if it's too loaded down it will clip and send strait DC to the driver and burn it up. Smoke from a driver only happens when it's super over driven. I'm more suspect of the amp having a bad power supply then the driver.

Alright, i'll get some pics of the wiring after I get out of class today.

Sorry about those pics, my camera decided it doesn't feel like working. I think the sub was damaged because when it hits certain notes it makes a nasty sounding crunch sound. I wanted to replace it anway because I want to be able to turn my amp up without cooking my sub. What do you think about this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/New-Memphis-M3-12-MUST-GO_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trkparmsZ72Q3a1424Q7c39Q3a1Q 7c66Q3a2Q7c65Q3a12Q7c240Q3a1318QQ_trksidZp3286Q2ec 0Q2em14QQhashZitem330277652016QQitemZ330277652016) ? I would be buying new from my shop, not off eBay, by the way. I'll get those pics up ASAP.

That should work fine. Parallel both 4ohm coils (that will give you a 2ohm load) and that amp should run just fine. The amp in that link you posted in the first post said it's 2ohm stable @ 300 watts. It should hit nicely.

Hopfully cooking that sub didn't damage the power supply in the amp, but there is only one way to find out, lol.

I picked up that M3 today, sounds really nice, I love it. I also turned all of the settings on the amp to below 3/4 of the way up. After reading around on some other forums I think this was my problem.

Now all that is left on my audio mod list is...
Memphis 6.5" speakers for the front
Memphis 6x9's for the rear
and a ton of FatMat

some wiring tips for the future. on the12volt.com there are all different types of wiring options. in the first case you were talking about you had a dual 4 ohm voice coil.
your amp puts out 500x1 at 1 ohm
your speaker was 250 rms
you could run the speaker in parallel or series.
if you ran a 4ohm dvc sub in series it would be a 2 ohm load. your amp is now a 300 watt amp. if if was parallel, it would be an 8 ohm load making your amp 75 watts.

at least you have a 1 ohm stable amp. some amps are rated 500 watts at 2 ohms, but if u ran it at 1 ohm it would be a 1000 watt amp, it may overheat though, you need to check the stability. everytime you halve the resistance you double the power and vice versa.

the amp in my x is 2500.1 at 2 ohms. if i ran it at 1 ohm it is 5000 watts. make sense? read up on here http://www.the12volt.com/ohm/ohmslaw.asp
it will help you out alot, especially when you get bored and add more speakers to your setup-

Believe it or not when I was in High school this guy I knew had got a brand new Chrysler 300 C. Two weeks later he had 24's on it, lambo doors on all four, and sound system worth about 4 grand. (his family is worth more than you could imagine) anyways he had a ride straight out of a rap video and the sub CAUGHT ON FIRE and BURNED THE ENTIRE CAR!!!! Literally a month after he got it he stood on the side of the road and watched his unit burn. No worries though he got a range rover sport a couple days later.

Too much power in the back of his trunk. At least your X didn't burn up

daym bro that sux, i would think its a short. if yur putting too much power to the subs shouldnt the fuse blow?

too much power wont make a car catch fire. he must of run a power and ground on top of one another, used too small of gauge wire. with a large system "straght out of a rap video" you would need to probably need to run 0. if 4 gauge was ran the wires would melt from the draw.

the shorter the wire the less of draw you get, therefore the wire stays cooler. in big systems, i always put spare batteries in the trunk, and isolate them from the oem electronics. if the spare batteries are close to the amp, the wires will not get as hot.

he probably had a stupid installer, or installed it himself. i would have had some nice words with the installer, then called my lawyer.

Cartoys installed the system maybe it wasn't too much power but one way or another it caught fire. Cartoys did nothing about it apparently there was something releasing liability it was a couple years ago and I don't talk to him anymore. He didn't seem to care too much.