Yesterday, I installed a pioneer 5500 amplifier and jbl 8" sub in my extended cab. My sub sounds alright on only one channel of two, but it pounds when i bridge it. Amp puts out 125 rms two channel, or 400 rms bridged wired at 4 ohms, sub is rated at 200 rms.

If I turn my gain way down, is it okay to run my sub at double the rated power? It would be 200 rms sub vs 400 rms amp output at half gain....

 

you should try and match them as close as possible which you won't have with either setup. You should be fine putting 400 to it though, because in reality, you won't be getting 400 continuous to it unless your music is just CONSTANT bass. Or you could get a 8" that does 350-400 continuous and just not worry about it.

 

Ya but finding a 8" sub that is rated 400 watts rms is hard unless I'm willling to spend alot of $$$...The kicker 8" comp I was gonna get is only like 100 rms max. I guess I should of gotten something a bit bigger lol.

With my setup, I have to amp the low freq. on the equalizer and bass boost +6db on the amplifier to make it sound decent. However, when I bridged it on half gain, I had turned off all bass boost and it sounded really good and powerful. Seemed alot cleaner that way.


Thanks for the quick response though, I was gonna post this on a car audio forum...but i was already a member here so. thats why I love these forums.

 

It works with other speakers too.
the gain and volume **** keeps the wattage down.
The amp is less stressed, runs cooler with less distortion, speakers play to their full potential.. etc,
Speakers can handle many times their RMS ratings. I always buy a larger amp then the speaker is rated for. I try to aim for double the speakers rms value.

Of course there is potential to damage the speaker, but that is only if you don't pay attention to the warning signs that a speaker will give you before hand.. like distortion at high volume, popping, snapping sounds,
They let you know when they are at their limits, that's when you either back the volume down or adjust your gain lower. pretty simple.