Question about 1-ohm stability

kickersqQX4 · Post by **kickersqQX4** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:05 am

Hey, I'm pretty new to aftermarket car audio so hopefully someone can help me out. I have a pair of 12" kicker L7's and a pheonix gold Octane 800r amp to power them. The subs are dual voice coil 4ohm and the amp is only supposed to go down to a minimum of 2 ohms. My friend that had this setup before I did is telling me that even though its not rated as 1 ohm stable, it will be "ok" to do this to get the most power out of the amp to run the subs. The installer at Circuit City says this will fry the amp so it needs to be ran at 4 ohms. My friend had this amp wired to run at 1 ohm and it worked for him for at least 3 months without any problems but I'm not sure if I really want to test it and find out( and possibly fry the amp) Has anyone else tried this or know this is possible? Thanks for the help.

Post by **GlassWolf** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:16 am

remember 1 ohm, 2 ohms, 4 ohms are nominal impedance ratings. as the frequencies being produced by the speaker varies, the actual load varies as well. In fact impedance and efficiency vary in indirect proportion to each other, but anyway the point is while your friend's setup may work for him at 1 ohm, he's also getting increased distortion, less headroom, worse signal to noise ratio, less damping, and overall poorer performance, as well as a greater chance of clipping and causing damage of both mechanical and thermal nature to the speakers over time if not immediately.

It's highly recommended that you not run that amp at 1 ohm. Either buy a 1 ohm rated amplifier, get a 2 channel amp and run 4 ohms bridged or 2 ohms stereo, or get a pair of dual 2 ohm coil subs instead. That's your best bet. Otherwise the safest solution with what you have is to stay at 4 ohms, and next time buy the right sub and amp combination to work together for maximum performance.

audiobass10 · Post by **audiobass10** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:23 am

Your amp is 2 ohm stable, therefore it's perfectly fine to run at 2ohms daily. It's not a good idea to run it at 1 ohm for daily driving, but you could probably get away with it for comps..which I doubt you're thinking about anyways. If you're runnin below the amps stability you're more than likely gunna clip the hell out of that amp and could very well cause a failure.

smgreen20 · Post by **smgreen20** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 2:07 pm

Note: The 800r is 600x1 at 2 ohms and and peak of 800. Those L7s will starve for more power, I know, I used to have one. Kinda miss it a bit. Best bet is to sell one of them and run just one L7 to the amp at 2 ohms in a bigger box and pocket the extra coin.

Post by **GlassWolf** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 4:04 pm

grab a Kicker KX1200.1
1200wRMS x 1 @ 1 ohm, and with 600 watts (or more) per sub you'll be all set with two L7 solobarics.
Those amps can be had fairly cheaply on eBay these days.. lots of em floating around.