The absolutely most important aspect of the power install is the earth wire. This
wants to be very securely bolted to the chassis of the car. We recommend drilling
a hole (take care not to drill through your spare tyre, brake lines or anything else!)
in the boot floor and sand off any paint to the bare metal where the wire will be
connected. A bad earth is a very common flaw in installation and can cause a
number of headaches later down the line so be sure to take care in doing this. Do
NOT use a self tapping screw to try and screw the earth down, as it will come
looseloose and impair performance. Other common disasters include trying to earth to
rear light mounting bolts, boot lock mountings and other ways to “trap” the cable
in the vein hope you might get a good earth. For every volt the amplifier doesn’t
see it requires TWICE the power to create the same output. That means poor
performance and a possible broken amplifier…. DO THE EARTH RIGHT!
Once your power cable, RCA and remote lead are all securely running through the
car to where you want the amp and the earth wire is fastened securely,
somewhere close to the amp, you can fit the amplifier.
TheThe amp needs to be mounted on a solid surface, favorites are boot floors, backs
of seats etc. Wherever you do choose to mount the amp, it needs sufficient
ventilation; 2-3” around will be enough. We do not recommend mounting an
amplifier on a bass box as the vibrations can cause damage to the internals of the
amplifier over time.
YouYou are now ready to connect your speakers! Take care that the positive on the
speaker is going to the positive on the amplifier. If your speakers are connected
“out of phase” then it will severely affect bass output as the 2 speakers will cancel
each other out acoustically.
ThisThis bit is VERY IMPORTANT. You need to ensure that the load you subject your
amplifier to is within specification and of a sensible nature. This particular amplifier
is suitable for running a stereo pair at minimum of 2 ohms per side, or a bridged
mono load at 4 ohms. Just as important is to remember that as well as the actual
physical impedance you need to consider the type of load you are going to subject
your amplifier to. A single 8, 10 or 12 inch subwoofer of an appropriately matched
construction and in a nicely designed enclosure will be fine run off a DB2.1 amp
atat 4 ohms (assuming proper setup) but you don’t want to try and run a pair of
massive aluminium coned dual voice coil monster woofers off it even though on
paper you might well have a four ohm load. We obviously recommend the Bass
Face range of subwoofers and speakers for ultimate compatibility.
Time to lay on some power. Connect the earth first. Then 12V power, then remote.
Then connect in the RCA cables and you can move onto setting up the gain and
sound controls on the amplifier (the fun bit!)
