1994 Oldsmobile, Amps and stereo on but getting NO sound!

[friloc]

Over the weekend I put in a car stereo to my 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra S. I am using custom everything, including power supply, speaker wire, grounding, crossovers, etc. I have a Nakamichi MB-100 stero system, a 200 watt alpine V-power MRP-F200 amp powering the 4 speakers (front and back), with the power and remote turn on cable jumping over to a jenson 600 watt XA-4250 amp bridged (that I got used at the flea market). The jenson is powering a 10 inch pioneer sub.The speakers are MB quartz with titanium tweeters and mid range built in. The corssovers in the front are factory mb quartz and in the back are Boston. The amps are grounded to the chassy of the trunk.

When all is said and done, the radio turns on in the dash and the amps light up in the back, but I get no sound from any of the speakers or the sub. I have only tried radio, as the cd player is jammed and I do not have an aux cord (i just ordered one and it should be here soon). Should'nt I at least be getting some static or something from the radio?

Let me know if I need to provide any more info.

Thanks,

Greg

[Perry Babin]

If you unplug the RCAs from the head unit and touch the center conductor of the RCA cable going to your amps, do you hear any noise?

If you set the volume high on the head unit, do you read any AC voltage from the RCAs on the head unit?

[friloc]

Originally Posted by Perry Babin

If you unplug the RCAs from the head unit and touch the center conductor of the RCA cable going to your amps, do you hear any noise?

If you set the volume high on the head unit, do you read any AC voltage from the RCAs on the head unit?

It's probaby worth mentioning here that the RCA cables do not go directly into the head unit, instead they go in to a secondary unit that is attached to the head unit, as seen here:Nakamichi MB-100

That said, no I got no sound by touching them with my hands. I tried putting my friend's tone maker device on the RCA cable at the front and got no sound. I was going to try going to walmart and getting an AV to headphones adapter and plugging it diretly in to the amp to see if I get any sound. I do not presently have a voltage meter. I could maybe borrow one up at the auto parts store.

If I have the speakers only plugged in to one amp, and the sub plugged soley in to another amp, if only one of the amps is blown should i get sound out of one of the two? The second amp's RCA is bridged from the pre-amp out from amp 1.

[friloc]

tl;dr of above post is no sound by touching rca's. I wanted to know if I would get sound from somewhere if only one of the amps was blown.

[Perry Babin]

Plug the RCA cables directly into the inputs of each amp when testing.

[friloc]

Originally Posted by Perry Babin

Plug the RCA cables directly into the inputs of each amp when testing.

As opposed to where? I think that is where I have them.

[Perry Babin]

Didn't you have the RCAs going from one amp to the other?

If so and the first amp is defective, the second one wouldn't get any signal.

[friloc]

Originally Posted by Perry Babin

Didn't you have the RCAs going from one amp to the other?

If so and the first amp is defective, the second one wouldn't get any signal.

ahh ok, yes. So the second amp (which has only the subwoofer attached to it) seems to be working. I unplugged the RCA from the preamp out of amp 1 and touched it with my hand and got some boom from the woofer.

Also, I'm sure this is bad, but I unplugged the RCA going to the first amp from the head and when they touched metal I got a little spark, so I'm pretty sure they have juice coming through them.

I also plugged my phone playing music directly in to channel 1 of the speaker amp and still got no sound, does this point to a broken first amp?

[jol50]

Could also mean the amp has a bad ground and is trying to use the RCA to ground, but could be something else too. If it does have a ground problem it has no power.

[Perry Babin]

Generally, if the RCAs have voltage (~12v) on the shield, the transformer in the amp is shorted. If you read 0 ohms between the B+ terminal and the input RCA shields, the transformer is shorted.