some of you know i got a system about a couple weeks ago.

have a kicker solo baric l7 15" powered by a 3000w power acoustik

1700 1 ohm
1300 2 ohms
900 4 ohms

the sub says a max of 1000 rms.

am i good the way it is? will i blow it if i turn my system up real loud?

 

what impedence are you running at?

 

idk what impendance is =o

 

oh, im running at 1 ohm.

 

How did you set your gain? What are your other amp settings set at? What size power wire do you have? stock electrical?

 

You need to take it all to someone who knows what they doin lol...People that get into car audio this massive blow lots of things in there car/truck. It needs to be stabilized and probably 0 gauge wires just for saftey...If your running an 8-12 gauge you might get to hot

 

0 gauge wire. I think i have the gains set low, but ill check tomorrow.

 

distortion and heat are your enemies, not to mention with impedance rise you aint gettin anywhere near 1700 watts out of that amp. If your careful there is no problem in overpowering, or underpowering a sub

 

so im not overpowering it?

 

First of all, with the renowned sub-par quality of Power Acoustik's equipment in general I highly doubt that you're going to get anywhere near 1700wrms @ 1 ohm from that amp on it's best day. Otherwise, the notion that you'll blow the sub will lie on the size and type of enclosure it's in, your listening habits, your gain setting and whether or not that amp is giving a trashy signal like a lot of others I've run across.

I hope you've gotten one that's got a fairly clean output signal, that will help your cause a lot. No one can know without putting an Oscilloscope on it though.

If you're running the sub in a ported enclosure do you know what it's tuned to? If so, be sure to set the SSF (sub sonic filter) to about 3 to 5hz below the tuning of the enclosure. An easy way to do this, and find the enclosure tuning frequency if you don't already know it without any special tools is to download a test tone CD. Start with a medium volume and the SSF set all the way to it's lowest setting at about 45hz and go down in frequency until the sub is barely moving at all, this will be the definite tuning frequency of the enclosure. Subtract 3 to 5hz from that frequency, play that frequencies track and adjust the SSF up until the sub is moving about half of the excursion it was and you're pretty well set. If you're running your sub in a sealed enclosure there's not really many reasons to worry about the SSF.

As far as distortion and clipping are concerned, >90% of all listeners run their equipment into clipping. Mostly because it's simply not loud enough before it reaches that point. Small amounts of distortion and/or clipping aren't that audible and not that damaging unless done over very long periods of time and even that point is highly debated. Either way, listen for the sub being stressed and if you're running a ported enclosure (unless it's in a trunk) you should be able to smell when the sub is getting hot, and just turn it back down. There's been plenty of people out there who've thrown almost 10x the rated power at subs without blowing them. The reason they got away with that is due to exacting enclosure design and the fact the power was only applied for a matter of seconds, nowhere near enough time to heat up and destroy the voice coil.

Stress and heat are the two major killers of subs, keep on top of those two issues and it should last a plenty long time.