gregbreakseverything

A while ago my girlfriend bought a car. I was looking through the car and found a 2 channel 500W peak Jenson amplifier under the rear carpet. Needing an amplifier in my truck at the time, i took it. The amplifier worked well, but i had nothing to compare it too. It always bugged me that it was a Jenson, because everything they make seems to be crap. Over the years I have attempted to upgrade it with a 450W alpine, a 450W Jbl, and a 500W eclipse amplifier. Non of these amps were as loud or as clean as the jenson. So I just accepted the confusion and have stuck with the Jenson amplifier.

I am wondering if anyone else has had the same anomaly, or they accidentaly made one good amp, and i have it.

Elton

any pics ?

Bumpin' Yota

Doing install professionally, no ive never seen that. Jensen would get the job done, but when properly setup, the mainstream brands would blow it away everytime. Jensen also has had a worse return rate than sony and that's a difficult thing to do!

gregbreakseverything

here is a half assed picture of the amp. It could even by quite noisy, but ive only had 50Hz and under going through it.

The one downside is after about 4 hours of continous playing at a headache starting level, it over heats and shuts down until it cools off a bit.

Calimus

Jensen actually has made good amps for a long time. I have a 650w 4ch Jensen amp that has been with me for about 10 years. I started living in my 86' Toyota pickup and moved to my VW Scirocco when I traded my 86' yota for my 94' yota.

I have it pushing a 10" sub and even at ear pounding levels it keeps on going. Overheating will happen depending on location. In your case you it looks like you keep it under the seat. With it sitting on carpet or anything of the like, that side of the amp will build large ammounts of heat. You might want to find something to use as as spacer to get it a bit up off the floor. That should help with the overheating. if you can't do that, a relocation to an area with better airflow might be a good idea.

Bumpin' Yota

Well I am very happy you both have been pleased with Jensen! Believe me its a rare occurance. As far as overheating and jumping into thermal protect, NO BUENO!!

Each time it does that it shortens the amp's life. If you can mount a small CPU fan blowing on it. Another idea is to mount the amp to a piece of aluminum or as Calimus said elevate it from the floor of the vehicle. The fan should have the best effect though.

An amp should only jump into thermal protect when running below minimum recommended impeadance for a long period of time.

My little RF100g2 is in the same local in my 2nd gen, and if you've ever seen a 2nd gen's underseat room, you'll know that it is 1/8 of the room of a 3rd gens underseat room. None the less it has never overheated, despite being run pretty damn hard for a nice 8hr drive to Nashville. In my 'rents F250 I put a kicker 250.2 under the center consol. Room for breathing? 0mm! The center consol acutally pushes the amp down into the carpet of the floor a little bit. No overheating issues yet! *knock on wood*

But yea put a fan on that bad boy and it should stop over heating.


ps - greg if you dont mind cutting a small hole in your carpet and pulling the driver's side seat you can really clean up those wires. (If you have the slack make the hole in the carpet under the amp itself so that the wires just fold under the amp and go under the carpet via that hole.)

ricky

Funny, I bought a Jensen 300W amp long before I bought my taco (about 4 years ago) and the damn thing just keeps ticking. Great amp, although will be replacing it with a nice new JL amp in the next week or so. Hopefully that will make a diff

Also, power wire can make a difference between amps if one amp is trying to take more power than the other.

4Hummer

JENSEN SUCKS....

I bought a Jensen POS off ebay, 600 Watt 4 Channel cost was about $150. Ran Really clean and had lots of tunning capabilites (built in CrossOvers, Multi Channels, Bass and Terrible gains and a Pretty Green LED that lit up the name JENSEN)

Well that was for about 6 months. and than it Died, Sent the Unit off for Warranty Repair and it took over 4months to get back. Jesen was in reciever Ship (bankrupt) No one would answer calls, return emails, reply to faxes, Finaly after consent calls I got the unit back repaired...

Sounded Great and everything worked....... FOR 2 MONTHS. than died again,
Cannot get it warrantied Again, Im SOL

STAY AWAY FROM JENSEN.

ricky

Are you sure that the amp wasn't getting too hot? From experience, it's one thing that can kill any piece of electronics, FAST.

I have been waiting the nearly 5 years for this thing to crap out on me. I even bought the best buy protection on it because I expected it to die. Lucky me!

If you want quality, spend more money. Jensen is cheap junk.

gregbreakseverything

Previously, the amp was sitting out in the open on an amp shelf in the extra cab in my pickup. It had lots of air room, but still overheated after 4 hours of headache creating sound. I knew mounting it under the seat would cause heat problems, so I am planning on installing some fans down there. The amps are mounted on a piece of fabric covered plywood, which sorta gets it off the carpet. I am surprised the amp lasted this long, so when it decided to go, I will just have to put out the money to buy another audison. :big2:

I worked in a radio shop a while ago, and we were selling Jenson Sirus satalite recievers. (possibly the first one ever) Soon enough, they all started coming back, and whatya know, Jenson decided to go bankrupt. I heard lately that another crappy audio company bought the Jenson name and is creating speakers and such again. Id stay away from those too.

Bumpin' Yota

wow I did not know that jensen went belly up! I figured all their product in walmart and product in summit and other domestic mod magazines would be more than enough to keep em afloat... It sucks to loose a company, even if they make crappy products. Because where crappy products are made, good products CAN be made.