aight seems like all my friends upgrade in thier amps and they decide to give me there old ones. only problem is they not sure if it works properly or even at all. so the question is how can you tell if an amp is blown? btw i dont have all those wires to hook it up and see. thanks please help.
Without having the power wires, just check the fuses. That's about as good as you're going to get without having to put power to them. Otherwise, you could just put 12V power to the 12V+ and Remote, and a ground to the -, if it turns on then you're halfway there.Spend some money on a amp kit and check if it turns on. You need a CD Player with RCA outs to see if the amp really works.
There may be a way to eyeball it, but I dont know about it.
Without hooking it up there is no way to tell for sure.Originally Posted by drywater
I agree with miklebud with all he said, you could even pop the amp open and i-ball the inside, looking for obvious burnt parts, but even then, a part can be bad and not show it.94
Absolute first step to telling a blown amp: SMELL IT! if it smells burnt then it is most likely bad, doesnt smell that burnt to think it is gone? Take it apart if you think you have the knowledge to put it back together without breaking parts and eye-ball it do that. No idea still? Hook it up and hope it works.
The serial number sticker on the amplifier is scratch and sniff. When the amplifier is blown, the sticker will smell like peaches when you scratch it. If it doesn't, then the amplifier will be ok. Let us know what you find out.
Damnit you beat me to it. But yes this is true unless its a pyle amp then it smells like poo when its blown.
Brrrraaaaahahahahahahahahah94
Steven, that is great advice. I have a question though; I decided to take my amplifiers out of my car to check and see if they were blown. I made sure to unplug the power and signal cables, so as to give it NO power or signal at all. I then scratched and sniffed the sticker, and it smelled like peaches (with a hint of lemon). Does that mean that my amplifier is blown even though it was playing music before I took it out to test it?
Ah, that means you bought an amplifier that is a lemon. Make sure to sniff the stickers before you purchase one next time to be sure it's isn't a lemon.
Ok you and jsilas are cracking me up so bad my gut hurts, but what cracked me up the most was my buddy, [out here from Winterpeg Manitoba] asked me, [looking over my sholder] "why do they make it smell like a peach?"94
you could just take your amp to an audio shop and have it bench tested, safest way if your not sure what you're doing.
get a battery charger and, get some wire (u could just use some speaker wire,but use that just to make sure the amp works)...put the negitive to the negitive..and remote and the positive to the postive side..some amps have a light on it which tells u if it works or not..its pretty easy to do,but of u dont fell comfortable doing it just bring it to a shop.
Brian, that will only tell him if the light works or not. If the output stage of the amplifier was damaged somehow, the power indicator might still come on, but that wouldn't necessarily mean there was no problem.
The bottom line is, to make sure it isn't blown, hook it up and see if it PLAYS MUSIC.
If you need an easy way to do this, take a car battery, and wire NEGATIVE battery post to NEGATIVE amp terminal, then hook POSITIVE battery post to POSITIVE and REMOTE amp terminals. This should power the amplifier up.
Next, you will need a music source. You can do something as simple as taking a portable CD player/mp3 player with a wire that has a 3.5mm jack at one end and L/R RCA connectors at the other end (This is just an example; you can get cheap ones for like $5) to feed your signal to the amplifier. (You can substitute this for any music source which offers RCA pre-amp outputs, but your home CD player might be more of a hassle depending on where the amp is during testing)
Finally, connect speakers to the outputs of the amplifier and see what happens. If there is sound, great. If not, bad news bears for j00!
It's really this simple...
yea thats true, i should of said to do that to.
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