How To Bridge a Car Amplifier For Maximum Power


Subwoofers have an large surface area and also because of how low the bass frequencies they can produce, they need lots of power to make them operate. Subwoofers can range anything from 300 rms to over 5000 rms watts. The more power required to make an car subwoofer operate to the full potential, you will also need to consider making your factory electrical more durable. This can entail adding an deep cycle car battery or several, an higher amp alternator and doing the big three upgrade. It takes power to make power is the old saying. If you have heard of the term bridging a car amplifier, it may confuse you at first. Bridging is an wiring configuration that can be performed, but your car amplifier has to support it. Bridging an car amplifier that is not designed for could maybe damage it overtime or it may work for an while and then go into protection mode. This is because it will overheat, you can add computer cooling fans onto the metal heat sink on the car amp to help reduce temperatures. You can bridge an car amplifier that has two stereo channel. When you bridge an car amplifier you are totalling up both watts from each channel.

For example, if you have an 150 rms amplifier at 4 ohms, if you bridge it, it can output an total of 300 watts rms. This is double the power to your car subwoofer, you will notice the bass vibrations and loudness increase, more power for free without spending any money on car audio upgrades. Always do your research by checking the manufacturers website or find an PDF manual for the car amp you want to check to see if it supports bridge mode. You will also need to ensure that you use good quality speaker wire to handle the extra load, i always try go for 8 gauge. OFC speaker wire will get you that extra sound quality and ensure your car subwoofers always get consistent power. Another important factor is you can only bridge an stereo amplifier, you can't bridge an mono block car amplifier. 

Now to bridge your car amplifier is easy. First you need to make sure that both Left and Right RCA cables are connected and provide an signal into the two set of channels you want to bridge on your car amp. Moving onto the terminal for the speaker channels on the amplifier. You will notice a positive and negative on one side and the same on the other, channel 1 and channel 2 to make it easier for you to understand. To bridge an car amplifier, you are taking the positive terminal from the speaker terminal cup and connecting to the positive on one set of channels, in this case channel 1. For the other side, you are taking the negative terminal from the speaker terminal cup to the negative terminal on the other set of channels, which is going to be channel 2. This allows you to combine both two channels into one big power output. Simple.

Previous Post
Next Post

0 Comments: