If you have to drill a hole, you will need to fit a rubber grommet to ensure the wire does not
get damaged as a short will ruin the whole setup and can be very dangerous. The positive
wire needs to go to the + positive terminal on the battery. A fuse of appropriate size to
protect the needs to be fitted in line and no more than 18” from the battery.
Once you have the cable in the car, run it back to the boot or to where you intend to fit the
amplifier. When you do this, be aware you will need to run the remote cable and the RCA’s
from the head unit back to the amp too. A common mistake is to forget that a car amplifier
needs the remote 12V turn on cable to see power for it to even work! If you only fit power
and ground you’re going to get…. Nothing!
If the wires you are running have to run over or go alongside other looms of the car, try to
cross them at right angles to avoid unwanted interference in the signal, and try not to run
them parallel with other cables either. If you can, run the power and the signal cables down
opposite sides of the car. This isn’t essential but if you do get any interference once the job
is complete the first thing to look at will be separating these wires so if you can do it first it
makes a lot of sense!
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 loose 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. Don’t forget to fit the bass remote control and run the control
cable with the other wires to the amplifier! This can be plugged in right away.
The 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.
You are now ready to connect your subwoofers! The BLACKDB1.1 has 2 sets of positive and
negative connectors, this is for ease of connecting multiple speakers and bridges inside
the amplifier (they are not separate outputs) Take care that the positive on the speaker is
going to the positive on the amplifier. If your car speakers and woofer are connected “out
of phase” then it can severely affect bass output as the speakers might cancel each other
out acoustically.
