good place to ground your amp

[steven]

fuk i give up i tried every bolt on the car and it still makes that wisteling sound.

[Dot.Zero]

OK go to your local Car Audio shop! Ask them for a ground loop isolator. It goes onto the RCA cables going from your radio to your amp. They will know when you ask! You really should reinforce the ground under the hood it will help alot. DO NOT GO CHEAP on the ground loop isolator. If you go cheap you get what you pay for!

[Typhoonk]

If you are using a cheap RCA cable, or a cheap amp you will probable be really lucky if you don't have a 'whistle' or noise sound.

If you want to avoid noise, run the power wire down the same side as the car battery. Then run the RCA's down the center of the car, under the carpet and the seats (there are no high powered wires to create noise for you).
Or get sheilded RCA's (twisted pair), they rock, on some installs I have ran 0gauge wire and the rca's side by side and no noise what so ever!!!

good luck

[lakersfan1]

Originally posted by Dot.Zero:
OK go to your local Car Audio shop!

If I recall, Steve is on Kauai. I don't even know if there's a BestBuy on Kauai, let alone a specialized car audio shop.

[lakersfan1]

Originally posted by Typhoonk:
If you are using a cheap RCA cable, or a cheap amp you will probable be really lucky if you don't have a 'whistle' or noise sound.

If you want to avoid noise, run the power wire down the same side as the car battery. Then run the RCA's down the center of the car, under the carpet and the seats (there are no high powered wires to create noise for you).
Or get sheilded RCA's (twisted pair), they rock, on some installs I have ran 0gauge wire and the rca's side by side and no noise what so ever!!!

good luck

Actually, unshielded twisted pair are better. The shielding just adds the amount of metal to attract interference. The shielding is only good at blocking non-audio frequencies, so maybe for a TV screen you'd want shielding since the frequncy of transmission is much higher, but not in the audi band. However, with my exoerience in dealing with cheaper amps, it may jsut be a bad amp. Alot of times the ground on the RCA inputs is shorted somehow which adds the noise. If the noise happens with the car off, I suspect the amp is the suspect.

[steven]

i got a loop islolator thing and it still makes that whisltling sound, when i come back from florida ill get the sound shop to check out

[Dot.Zero]

Good choice! Its really hard to figure something out like that with out seeing and hearing the car. could be anything!! Ground loops normally fix things. If, that doesn't then I normally start from the amp and work forward til I find the problem.

[n_o_s_21]

the ground from the alternator on our cars sucks that is why all amps seem to get enginge whine noise. I relocated it with a heavier gauge cable and now I can ground my amp anywhere. grounding an amp to a deck chassis works well because it is grounded well by the cars antenna. funny how stuff works like that. anyways the new ground worked good for me.

[Spida]

ok i know htis will sound stupid but where do you have you amp attached to? is it a metla peice of your car becaseu if so that might be your problem. Im sure i will get a bunch of peopel telling me they have their amps attached to the frame or somethign and have never hada problem bu a buddy of mine who works at a&b in the car adio said that if you dont isolate the amp from the car it can creat a ground loop and give this noise.

[lakersfan1]

Originally posted by Spida:
Im sure i will get a bunch of peopel telling me they have their amps attached to the frame or somethign and have never hada problem bu a buddy of mine who works at a&b in the car adio said that if you dont isolate the amp from the car it can creat a ground loop and give this noise.

That's bull crap. The car's frame is a much better conductor with less resistance than any wire you can fit. It's a 2,000 piece of steel - how much would a run of 0 guage wire from the amp to the battery be? Not an entire ton of metal. If your battery is grounded to the frame properly, and the amp is grounded to the frame properly, then the amp is in essence grounded directly to te battery's negative termainal better than you can ever do.

[Pearl-JapSpec]

mine = grounded to trunk floor.
1500 watts fine.

[2fazed]

I use a couple ground loop iso. from Radio Shack. And use the bolt from the back seat latch part. Running about 1400watts and has been good for 5 years. I've noticed if your RCA's, power wire higher than 4gauge, or extremely cheap amp will give you that buzz.

[n_o_s_21]

I agree with spida. There has been some cases where I've been working on a system and screwed the AMP CHASSIS to the metal floor of the car. I then connected the amp ground wire to the frame of the car. with certain amps this creates an iso loop, which can cause unwanted "WHITE NOISE". the fix to the problem was to mount the amp to a piece of mdf, and then mount that to the floor. I've even heard of cases where the internal amp power lead, got too hot, melted to the inside amp chassis and grounded out on the screws through the car body, thus causeing an electical fire. so I think to be more clear this is what he was talking aout rather than just the mp ground wire.

Will

[mykel78]

The seat back is a bad idea for a ground, agreed. I've had an amp mounted to it without a problem. My ground is to the seatbelt mount bolt under the seat. In fact, didn't even sand anything. The bolt is secure to the frame, the ground wire is secure to the bolt. 2 years later I redid that, by sanding away the paint to bare metal, using the same spot. Now 5 years later, have added another amp. Ground to the same place, never a problem. In my experience, a bad ground causes things not to work, fuses blowing, and other such excitement. The whining may be something else. I recently had an RCA cable wear against metal, exposing wire and grounding out. Any good body metal will make a good ground, be careful where you place your wires, where they will not wear.

[Nd4SpdSe]

Originally posted by []D s y []D h y:
if look at the back of your trunk where your cover is for your jack. take it off, take out the jack, and the unit it sits in has a lag bolt nearest to you, put it there, thats the only ground i could find that work. i tried everything else and blew like 10 fuses.. and those 80s werent cheap to replace.. lol

That's where my stuff if gounded as well