First off, the facts.
1998 Ford Ranger extended cab 4 cylinder 5 speed manual. 2WD

aftermarket pioneer head unit.
Pioneer aftermarket speakers all the way around.
Subs & amp.
amp is wired directly to the battery and has RCA cables to the head unit

high output alternator 220 Watt was just installed
I can find no fuses blown anywhere.
I have adapters for the factory wiring harness to wire everything in so there's no clipped wires anywhere

I turn on the stereo and the speakers work initially.
So i turn the volume up and it sounds good. Then there was a clicking noise and all the speakers except for Subs stopped working
swap my head unit out for a different head unit that I had laying around (same plug) and still no speakers.
any help is appreciated in trying to figure out how to get things working again

 

I've never done any stereo work on a Ranger specifically but I've installed upwards of 20 head units and subs and this sounds like a pretty generic electrical issue.

Id start with seeing if you can get the factory head unit to work (if you still have it). You said you didn't cut any wires so it should just be a matter of removing the
wiring harness and plugging the factory system back in. Also disconnect the amp.

The best way to troubleshoot this kind of problem is to get everything back to the way it was before you made any changes and start adding parts to it until you
recreate the failure. One you get it to fail again then you know what in the mix caused the initial problem.

Also, if you want to verify you didn't simultaneously blow all your door speakers, you can pull one out and touch a 9 volt battery across the terminals. it'll make the
voice coil actuate and that'll prove that its not the speakers that are cooked.

Good luck.

 

Get the model number of your amplifier, check its OHM rating like 4 to 16 OHMS

Reads like your amp when into "protect" and shut down
0 ohms is a dead short and will fry any amplifer
But best power is at 2-4 ohms, most speakers are 8ohms, but as you increase the power(volume) ohms will drop, also low bass notes really drop ohms

If OHMs get too low most amplifiers will blow fuse inside or circuit breaker to protect amplifier, but some will just burn out

 

So after doing some more researching. I learned that there should be a stereo amp behind my passenger side drop seat so when I went to go pull the speaker out of that side I noticed the sound came back. I was running a test in the background. Turns out that when I installed that speaker I put it in a hundred eighty degrees out of where it should be and had to stretch the adapter wire across the back to make it fit well. when I took it back out and turned it around and reinstalled it everything worked fine. Kind of an odd way to fix it but it works so I'm not questioning it

Thanks for all your help though guys!
-fireguy8762

 

You can reverse + and - on a speaker, doesn't hurt anything electrically.
But that speaker will be "out of Phase" with any other speaker, some can hear the difference, some can't.

A speaker is just a coil of wire, so electrically there is no polarity