For those that think cheap amps are a good thing, I have one thing to say. You get what you pay for.

I recently purchased a Kicker amplifier from ebay a kx650.4 for my sister. As soon as I got the amp I bench tested it. This is a very simple test plug the amp in send a signal in each channel and test to make sure it works.

Since this is a 4 channel amp it has 4 seperate channels duh right. I found that one half of the amp was not working correctly. So I took the thing apart to figure out what was wrong. I will provide pictures later. What I found was the worst build quality I have ever seen. And a serious design flaw.

I couldn't figure out why only half of the amp was working. I kept getting squeling in half the amp when the gain was adjusted. And this was amplified everytime I touched the ground on the RCA. To me this meant a grounding problem. So I dug a little deeper. I traced the ground on the RCA and it went nowhere. Half of the amps RCA ground goes nowhere WTF. The other half of the amp has a proper RCA ground. This set up relies on the deck having a common ground. So half the amp wont work correctly unless the other set of RCA's is plugged in and the deck has a common ground. To me this is a HUGE design flaw. floating a fricken ground pin and relying on the deck to have the common ground is nuts.

After seeing this I would warn anyone to stay away from Kicker amplifiers. Very poorly built.

 

good find.

fix the grounds yourself now

 

 

Its hard to tell from the photo but there is a lot of corrosion by the DC connector cause from the left on flux, this is visable in the first photo. The solid copper looking wire isn't even copper It's copper plated lol.

Second photo is the back of the amp. Just about every solder joint is a cold solder joint. With flux left all over the amp.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 93egsedan &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">good find.
fix the grounds yourself now </TD></TR></TABLE>
That part of the amp has been redesigned now

This amplifier supposedly retailed for $600. hah ya right proof that outsourcing gives the manufacturer more profits but you get a crappier product.

 

could it be the amp used and is not working properly? what the hell do i know i never had a kicker amp.

 

I have also heard that Kicker is not that good of a brand for amps. However, most of the **** you buy on ebay are factory rejects, so you can't generalize to all of Kicker's amps until you see at least one that was bought off the shelf.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by suspendedHatch &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I have also heard that Kicker is not that good of a brand for amps. However, most of the **** you buy on ebay are factory rejects, so you can't generalize to all of Kicker's amps until you see at least one that was bought off the shelf.</TD></TR></TABLE>
No the person I bought this from bought it new. And there is nothing wrong with this amp other than how its designed. The RCA ground on the second half of the amplifier is floating. Which means it doesn't connect to anything inside the amplifier. So one set of RCA's would be unshielded, the return path for ground would be the other set of RCA's ground.

The build also quality stinks. I wish I still had photos of the soundstream I worked on 1000% times better.

 

Unfortunately I have to agree, and its not just Kicker, the first thing I do when a new model comes in is open it up and have a look, and over the last 20 years or so as new models come out, and less and less "made in Japan" and more made in butt expletive Taiwan or **** hole sweat shop Malaysia quality has gone out the window, but what can you expect when you pay someone 12 cents an hour.

That goes for all brands from what I can see, your mention of a SoundStream amps tells the story, I remember when they came out, I was working for a
Aralax Acustics, [Canadian distributor for SoundStrem] at one of their car audio retail stores, Sound Plus Mobile, [a car audio only shop] we carried "high end car audio, Nak, Sony ES, ADS, BostonAcustics, B&W, and Dynaudio among others, and when the first MC 500 came to the shop, we could not believe how well it was constructed, [in all respects] but sad to say even SoundStream amps of today are nothing compared to yesteryear.

The most noticeable of the bunch is the sorry state of Sony car audio today, what a change from Sony ES to Sony Xpode from one of the best to just plain old crap. 94

 

I hope Soundstream hasn't fallen to these levels. I haven't taken a newer one of there amps apart yet though. Kicker is another one that wont release schematics. Amplifier design isn't rocket science and its nothing that couldn't be backwards engineered. Is just makes it a pain to repair.

 

I don't know if SoundStream is as bad as you say Kicker is but they are nothing like they used to be. 94

 

Thats horrible looking. I know very little about the internals of an amp, and that looks poorly built to me.

Oh, I also heard Power Accoustic bought Soundstream. I don't know if it is true, but the new products have that flea market look to them.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by fcm &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I don't know if SoundStream is as bad as you say Kicker is but they are nothing like they used to be. 94</TD></TR></TABLE>

Sounds an awful lot like Rockford Fosgate.

 

if u bought a kicker amp on ebay u more than likely bought a refurb or defective amp. the poor grounds were probably why the owner was selling it in the first place.

A lot of companies have cheaped out on thier internal circuitry, I guess they think noone will look at it.
Kicker 4 channels are far more problematic than thier 2 and 1 channels I dunno why that is.

If you are going to buy rockford fosgate, buy thier power series, they are now 100% different than thier punch counterparts. Much nicer quality components.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by incubus &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">if u bought a kicker amp on ebay u more than likely bought a refurb or defective amp. the poor grounds were probably why the owner was selling it in the first place.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

he seemed pretty confident in the seller

and he said the seller said he got it new

 

my frioend used to have that amp in his car...we got it for $300 new....and it did work with his clarion tv head unit...however it did sound like **** with matched kicker 6.5" components......

 

judging by what looks like water damage on the bottom right corner of the top of the board I think he was lied to, or the seller didnt know what he was selling.
I sell kicker amps, and I have seen water damage on them a number of times and it looks like that, unless its just a bad pic.

 

Lol it's not water damage its flux damage. Flux is corrosive most lazy companies use rosin flux, because at room temperature its less corrosive. Companies use rosin because it requires less steps since they dont have to clean it off.

Amplifiers get hot, which then reactivates the flux which then makes it corrosive again. Better products use organic flux and clean the circuit board with water.

What your seeing in the pictures is rosin flux residue.
Take apart another kicker amp and I would bet you will find similiar results.

And it didn't have a "poor" ground the ground wasn't there at all. This isn't an owner problem. He had this professionaly installed and removed. At first I thought it might have been caused by the installer. But after digging deeper I found this is a circuit problem not an installation problem. Maybe I'll take picture of the circuit to help clarify.



Modified by nsxxtreme at 10:10 AM 12/16/2005