iroczrockz

Hey, I have an Alpine 3547 amp (45Wx2). It has a status monitor on top that normally is lit up green when it is working well. Well mine is now lit up red and my worthless book on it only says "power problem". Does anyone have any ideas what might be wrong with this thing?

It will amplify for a second (or less) then stop. I am running two 8" JL's. I have done nothing new just stopped working one day. Any advice?
Thanks

redbird_400

Before you try to use your amp again it would be a good thing to check for any crossed wires. Speaker wires, power wires, its good to check them all to make sure the wire isnt touching another wire that it should not be touching or grounding out on a metal object on your car. Be carefull, you dont want to fry your amp by continuing to have it go in its protect mode.

>Once I had installed these cerwin vega subs that were given to me by a friend. The two wires on the back of the speaker cone touched and fused together, this took out that speaker and the amp, the other sub just was never the same, that was a bad day. I hope that or something simmular never happens to you.

>you could start at the amp, disconnect your speakers and leave only the power, remote and ground connected, if the protect mode still comes on then you know its either one of those wires, if not you may have a wire causing a problem going to the subs.

iroczrockz

Thanks for the troubleshooting advice. I didn't think about taking off the speaker wires. So are you thinking that there is nothing wrong with the amp? Maybe wiring is the only problem?

redbird_400

I would say a wire being grounded out to either another wire or some random metal object is more likly to be the case then a fried amp, lets hope. Just want to find out before you do have a fried amp, going into protect mode to much cant be a good thing.

chio987

my amp did that when i first put it in, it was the "protection mode" red LED. i had a lose ground. the ground moved and sparked, i just made it really tight and no more problem

iroczrockz

I had some time today to do a "little" troubleshooting. I hooked up the amp with the pwr, gnd, and remote. It was fine, green light. Whenever I put in the input (either side) it went to protect mode. The way the input is routed is from the 6x9's (split off) and come to think of it I have had some problems with them too for a while now. So I think I will have to trace those wires down and check them out.

Ya know I don't think I would of gotten this far without a little help from redbird. Thanks man!

napalmdemos

You should run a rca cable from theback of the stereo to the amp, By running them off the 6x9s you could be putting to much high end into the amp throwing the amp into protect mode. I learned this lesson the hard way on my stock stereo in my wifes Grand Am and fried the amp.

Maverick H1L

iTrader: (8)

You should do that, run the RCA cabling from the headunit to the amp, but not everyone does this, namely me. I have a Jensen (yeah, I know, you guys think it's crap) JXP-340 amp that I have running off of the rear channels of my Eclipse headunit. The input cabling is connected directly to the 6x9's I have in the sail panels, and I have had no problems with them. It may be that you do not have an adjustable high gain on the amp, and the headunit is providing too much power for the inputs on the amp to handle. If this is the case, then you are definitely better off using RCA cabling from the headunit itself to the amp.

iroczrockz

I tore the car apart a little more today and now I think I will have to completely tear down the system to redo the wiring and everything. There is so much excess wire and I have an EQ that might be the culprit as well. I have RCA jacks running from the EQ to the amp. I hooked up the speakers to the amp, still had a green light. I hooked up "one" input and got a red light. Switched sides with the input and still got a red light. I am beginning to wonder if it is a prob. with my EQ. I am thinking about bypassing the EQ this weekend and see if that fixes the problem. Sound good?