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Mysterious Right Channel Drop-Out in Custom-installed JL Audio System

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by truesilverone, Jun 5, 2008.

  1. truesilverone

    truesilverone New Member

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    OK, so I have a 2006 JBL w Nav that I've gutted and installed with JL Audio loudspeakers in the doors, silk JL's in the sail panels and a JL 10" sub in a short box nested in the rear under the roll over cover. Sub powered by a Mono JL 250w amp and doors powered by a JL 4 channel 50rms amp.
    All sounded amazing for months until this past weekend, while road tripping with friends, the right channels drop out. Not completely but much noticeably lower in volume than the left. To fix, I simply turned off the power on the OEM head unit for a minute or so and all was fine again.

    Anyone have any clue what this means. I have an in-line fuse between the subs. Is this the amp overheating, a need for a capacitor, etc?

    I really don't know since it did not drop out completely on the right channel. I hadn't experienced this before since the weather has just finally turned and the system was really cracked-up while road tripping with four singing friends in a car for the first time this year.

    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. JL Audio tends to be tip-top hardware so that's one reason I'm stumped.
     
    #1 truesilverone, Jun 5, 2008
  2. Presto

    Presto Has his homepage set to PC

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    There's a few places to start looking to isolate where the problem is happening.
    When the right channel drops out, is there any noticeable volume drop in the subwoofer, as well? If you swap the right and left RCAs on the 4-channel amp, does the left speaker drop the sound? The first task is to figure out where the sound is getting dropped. Is it the headunit, the amp, or the speakers?

    Personally, I had an issue where my right channel would flake out. The issue was caused by corrosion / oxidation of the right RCA input on the amp. The amp had been in use for a few years. I fixed it with some cleaner fluid from an electronics store.
     
    #2 Presto, Jun 5, 2008
  3. SureValla

    SureValla Member

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    was this with your ipod?

    my right channel drops out when my connection inside the armrest comes out some
     
    #3 SureValla, Jun 5, 2008
  4. GeoGeek

    GeoGeek Member

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    How are you getting signal from the factory system into your amps?
    I don't believe the JL amp has speaker level inputs, so you may have some kind of line level converter in the signal stream; if so, sometimes they have little gain controls (input sensitivity potentiometers) on them.....you might try adjusting these gain levels....otherwise I'd suspect a signal interconnect issue in the RCA jacks like Presto mentioned. Let us know if you try these possibilities and still come up empty.
     
    #4 GeoGeek, Jun 5, 2008
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