It may be you have the gains set to high on the amp. That will cause a muffled/muddy sound, the crossovers are set too low or both. Yea it will be loud but the SQ is being over driven. Try backing down the gains and see if the SQ gets better. I would try that before dumping the amp. BTW do you have that amp bridged to the hcx's or just running 2 channels to them?

 

 

So no bridging. Just the front channel (top 4 outputs) to the speakers and the rear (bottom 4 outputs) not hooked up. I would still try backing off the gains to see if that makes a difference.

 

I also had to back down the gain when I had a PN4.1000d on the front channel with the Motos but I also found that if I backed it down too much (below 10 o'clock) I would get distortion and the amp would go into protection mode. Also it may be worth mentioning to have the bass and treble set to flat when tweaking.

Gypsye, do you think it could be that the Boom Box going through the BT line levelers still puts out a stronger signal than that amp likes? The reason I ask is when I ran that amp distortion was never a problem no matter how loud I played it, but I was running a true preamp signal going into the amp.

 

I have that same SS amp and the same Hertz HCX 165 speakers in my SG fairing and I think the SQ is excellent, even at higher volumes. You can definitely push those speakers.

 

I'm not sure if that is the case or not. That amp is a solid budget amp with clean power and I have not had of any problems with SQ from it unless it is bridged putting 500w to each speaker.

 

 

Roger that. I swapped mine out for an Arc Moto 600.4 to regain some space and FM reception and can say it doesn't sound noticeably better to my ears than the SS did. Also it has that dinky fan that is starting to make noise when you first start it up that the SS doesn't have.

The only difference in SQ I noticed was MAYBE cranking it super loud, and I mean louder than I ever would keep it set at. I just wanted to see what it would do and it drowned out my Rinehart true duals at 65 or so, but then again so would the SS.

I will throw this out there in case it rings a bell with someone. I only ran the SS amp for a little while running just four speakers (two in fairing and two in rear pods). I wasn't overly impressed with this setup. It got loud but wasn't a clear as I'd hoped it would be at speed. If that is what the OP has then maybe it is just a situation of not enough speakers of significant size to meet his expectations. In fairly short order I added lowers and put them in parallel with the rear speakers and that made a HUGE improvement in SQ. I couldn't hear the rears very well because they were tied to the lowers but the overall amount of sound reaching my ears greatly improved. I was able to use the fader to lower the volume to the fairing speakers so the lowers would blend in to my liking.

I eventually wanted to free up the front amp for just the four front speakers and get another amp for the rears (while adding lids at the same time) and that finally got me where I could balance things out front to back pretty good. That SS amp drove those four front speakers as loud as I felt comfortable listening without distortion. I think once I had the rear channel changed over from a 2 ohm load to a 4 (by giving the rears their own amp) it sounded a tad bit cleaner on the lowers. Once I got a DSP I added some EQ curves that I liked and pushed them even harder since I took out the mids from the Motos that hurt my ears and beefed up the bass and treble a little and capped off the Mmats in the lowers at 5Khz and boosted the bass there a tiny bit. Even with the additional workload on that amp it still didn't distort at high speed riding.

All this doesn't mean that the SS amp is the best for every situation, but a lot of us have hammered the daylights out of the things and they do what we ask them to.

 

Good suggestion there.

Here are the specs from the Hertz website:Power Handling - Peak W200Power Handling - Continuous W100Impedance Ω4Frequency response Hz50 ÷ 22kSensitivity dB SPL92Woofer size mm (in.)165 (6”1/2)Tweeter size mm (in.)20 (3/4”)Woofer Voice Coil Ø mm (in.)30
I don't know what HPF setting would be best for those speakers but some folks like about 100Hz on 6.5" speakers. Also looking at the power ratings 140 watts don't sound bad given the range of 100 to 200 they list.

On my 6.5 Motos in my fairing I ran them on full pass and didn't notice any real difference but I have heard those are a rare bird in that regard.