Grounding my audio amp

ground

Doc here imp:

At 400 watts, I'd run a battery cable ground from the battery to the mount system you have provided for your AMP.

This will provide a good bonded ground to the whole area your amp is located...If you don't want to go that large on the cable, you can get "Monster" wire at the local stereo shop...

WHEN routing your wires, KEEP power, ground and audio wires separate. Else it will sound like crap. separate the audio from power at least 6 inches or more if you can.

On an amp that large, I would use a RELAY for power, even though you may be using the power antenna or remote amp from the player...and don't forget a proper fuse!

Just wire the power antenna To fire the coil on the relay, and the relay contacts will be power from the battery fuse going to the NO (normally open) contact, and the Amp power input will be the (CW) center wiper.

Doc

I'm with Doc. Having owned and installed both "small" stereo's, to high powered competition units, I would advise running a ground cable to your battery. For a 400 watt unit, you want at least an 8 guage cable for both the power and ground sides of your circut. If you do not runa a cable, the amp will work, however under high draw conditions (VFL music) the amp will "cut out" and you will lose sound for a second, kinda like a cd skip. This will happen especially if the amp is bridged into the higher power output feature (very hard on not only the amp, but the coils in your subs). Using a relay is not critical, unless you have more than one amp running, i.e: amp for subwoofers, and a seperate amp for midrange, high, and fill speakers. If you are running several amps, the draw on the "remote" circut in your head unit may fry the internal circutry. In this case, do as Doc recommended.

For a clean install, with good sound, I like to run the speaker outputs on the opposite side of the vehical as the power/ground cables. This helps keep any RFI from the high draw power circut from interfering with the signal to the speaker. This is a bit more work than just grounding to the body, but ensures that the sound quality will only be affected by the quality of the recording, and the quality of the stereo equipment (also allows for future expansion, especially if you use 1 or 2 guages larger than needed for your power/ground cables, so you can upgrade to larger amps!). Have fun, and try not to make your ears bleed!

Sorry but I think your putting the bull before the horns on this. He is saying that the amp isn't working and he is assuming it's a grounding problem, which it very weel could be but what about his power feed and where is this coming from? Is the remote wire ran correctly to the stereo? and yes is the ground sufficiant? Make life easy for yourself, if you question the ground simply run a length of wire directly from the battery, does that solve teh problem? if so then before you start dropping a second line from your battery look for a better grounding point closer to the amp, also for ground wires you want them as short as possible and my rule of thumb is nothing longer than 14"
Also 1 more thing to consider here is the quality of the amp? Many amps vary in quaity of parts.
Anyway dont mean to carry on but start simple then work your way around and please please make sure you have an inline fuse very close to your battery for this, wire fires are not fun. Trust me...lol Good Luck