Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio is there a fast way to see if an amp is dead?

I think I may have toasted my amps, but i'm not sure how to go about testing it to REALLY make sure. WHat do you guys do to check if an amp is dead?

Try tossing a pail of water on it, if that don't wake it up it's curtains...

If your amplifier is not coming on while hooked up, there is a good chance something inside is fried. If you have some minor electrical know how, pop the cover and look over the board for broken connections or metly badness. If you still can't find it, get someone to look at it for you that knows what to look for (this step may cost money)

Well i ended up wiring up the jensen amp the way i had it before (no distro block, onboard fuse IN) and it fired right up! I haven't had the chance to test the other amp but i'm sure it works.

Which leads me to my next question:
The jensen has an onboard fuse and the rockford does NOT have an onboard fuse. What would be the best way to wire em up? I tried using a distro block with two fuses(no fuse in the jensen) and it didn't work what soever.

For the purposes of testing an amp it really doesn't matter where the fuse is. In fact it doesn't matter whether you have a fuse at all..as long as you've got a fire extinguisher handy in case the amp is shorted out internally.

For the purposes of installation, the wire to the amp should be fused with an inline fuse as close as possible the source of power that is connected to. Usually that's the battery.

A fuse only protects things downstream from it, and if that wire feeding the amp were to get pinched and shorted somewhere, you want the fuse to blow instead of the wire heating up and catching something on fire.