Tonight I was finishing my system install and just as I was about done everything went wrong...
I was using a multimeter and a 1khz test track to set the gain on my amp (for my rear and door speakers). Suddenly my tweeters (hooked to the front outputs on my HU) stopped working. The HU still showed it was playing the track, but no sound. I had my HU volume at 28 out of a possible 35.
I decided I would figure it out after I found the correct gain settings for my amp since I was in the middle of doing that and then suddenly the both right outputs on my amp started reading in hardly any power on the multimeter, after I had just set the front gain at 15.5 volts from the front right ouput just a few minutes earlier.
So now I'm trying to figure out what the deal is... I'm thinking maybe my HU is junk? But I'm concerned about the amp too since I bought it refurbished. What should I do from here? Pull the head unit out and test with other speakers? Is it possible for the HU to not be sending signal through to the amps so my right side outputs aren't working? Or maybe BOTH the amp and HU are messed up?
Update... I bench tested the HU speaker outputs on another speaker and they work, took out my tweeters and tested them and they don't. So my brand new Clarion tweeters are complete garbage.
But I'm still not sure about the amp situation... I believe it could either be the HU RCA outputs aren't working or my amp is defective... how should I go about figuring this out?
HU is Kenwood. I know it's not a great brand but I didn't figure it mattered much as long as it played CDs since I would be running my speakers via amplifiers... I never even meant to run my tweeters off the HU but it just happened that way because I ran out of speaker wire and I don;t think it will make a huge difference.
Ah, congrats on finding out the tweeters are bad! I hope you were able to return them.
Hm, what exactly is wrong with the amp? From what I'm reading, the only problem you had is that the tweeters weren't working. Unless you're thinking they got blown from a faulty head unit?
Actually, I feel like a dumbass posting this, but my tweeters have an in-line crossover which I bypassed because I thought it was just a piece of foam and I figured the crossover was in the speaker portion of it if that makes sense. I blew them by sending low frequencies to them I believe, so I bought another pair and they are working fine.
As for the amp, it actually was broken and for whatever reason not sending signal through the right speaker outputs. I sent it to Harmon and they fixed it for me.since it is under warranty.
I had two bad things happen at once so that is why it was so confusing I think}
Recently I had a similar experience: my headphone cord went bad on me, and I thought it was the iPod because the jack on the iPod had always been loose. Tore the iPod apart and accidentally stressed the ribbon cable too much i.e. tore it. Found out afterwards that it was the headphone cord and as a result had a busted iPod (no sound output from the stressed ribbon cable) and bad headphones. Fortunately both are fixed now I'm glad you got everything figured out as well.