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[Basshead1984]

So I got a Kicker DX 250.1 mono amp at a pawn shop awhile back. It turns on and has never shut off even when I play it at loud volumes. It gets super hot tho. The sub I power with it is an early 2000's 12 " Diamond audio CM3 dual 4 ohm voice coil which I have wired in parallel for 2 ohms. The sub handles 600 rms and the Kicker amp puts out 140x1 at 4 ohms and 250x1 at 2 ohms. The sub is in a sealed box with airspace around 1.25 cu ft. I don't get deep lows really its more like lot of bass impact in the 45-60 hz range. This sub is power hungry I found out.

So here's my problem with the amp... I've known how to set amp gains with a dmm for the last 7 years so this was easy for me. I used a analog multimeter to set the amp gain. It seems more accurate then the cheap one I got from walmart a few months ago. I ran a 60 hz 0 db tone at volume 47 of 62 on my pioneer 2013 yr head unit, eq flat, sla at 0, bass boost on hu 0. The Speaker output clips at vol 48. I had the sub level on the hu to 80 hz +6. I was only able to get 5 volts AC even with the gain on max. With the walmart DMM I have I got 20 AC I hook back up the sub, play music the sub didn't even move. So I'm beginning to wonder if the power supply in the amp is damaged or the gain has something to do with not having the remote bass control. SO I unhook the sub again and turn the hu up to 60-61 and was able to get around 17-18 AC volts with the analog multimeter. If I pushed the bass boost button on the amp(according to kicker it adds 9 db at 40 hz) in it'd go to 23 AC which I was goin for at 2 ohms! With the walmart DMM, it read 31.6 AC. The damn gain on MAX again. I hook back up the sub, play music at vol 60-61 and that damn Kicker amp finally comes to life! Thing is the speakers distorted like mad with music at that volume but the sub had a lot more output for some reason! So I unhooked that Kicker amp and hooked up my cheap Dual amp with the same settings, vol 47 of 62 on the hu, eq flat, bass boost off on amp and the gain was only half way up on that amp and hit rated power easily at vol 47. I then put hu vol at 60-61 and the gain was barely turned up.
So which amp should I use? The Kicker amp had better sounding bass than the Dual amp at vol 60-61 with music with slight distortion from front speakers. With Dual amp on vol 47, sub hit good, front speakers never distorted. I'm thinking that kicker amp is faulty or it has too high of a input level for the gain to be maxed out. I personally like that Kicker amp but hate having the vol almost maxed out on my hu, the amps gain maxed out and the bass boost on.

I've never had an amp that I had to almost max the vol out on the hu just to get rated power. This is totally bizarre to me. It'd always happen around 3/4-80% max vol and the gain would never be maxed out unless I used a -3 to -10 test tone.

I Looked at the manual online and found out that the low pass crossover is fixed at 80 hz 24/octave and a built in subsonic filter at 25 hz 24/octave and both can't be turned off and arent' even shown on the amp itself. The true rms birthsheet also said 278x1 at 2 ohms so the 23 AC I got was just about right on. Even if I ran a -3 or -6 test tone to get more output, I'd have to use the superbass eq most likely. So could the amp having both those fixed crossovers be WHY I couldn't get the 17-23 AC at volume 47 and had to raise the hu to vol 60-61 to get full power out of the amp?