Amplifier power wire - Its all the same? -- or is it?--

Well if you are running amplifiers (amps) in your vehicle, you have to have them. A power wire connects at the battery under the hood, mostly, runs through a fuseholder, then through the car to whereever your amps are located.

Before I get started on what's what, I figured a quick lesson on Ohm's Law. Basically, Ohm's law is a way to calculate resistance, voltage, and current. Any other explanation, is beyond the scope of this page. Now how does Ohm's Law relate to power wire? Well the longer a wire is, the more resistance is in the wire, and less current that is able to flow through it. Current flows from Ground to Positive. Therefore, when installing amps, make sure your ground is the same size as your power wire, and is not longer than 18 inches.

What is Current? Well there are many explanations involving a garden hose and faucet all over the internet. But I think I have a much easier way of explaining it.

Example Let's say you go to McDonald's and order a shake. After putting the straw in it, time yourself. For 30 seconds, continuously suck on the straw at a constant rate. Of course McDonald's gives you a huge straw, so you dont have a problem retrieving the shake.Now, remove that straw and put in a straw half that diameter, and repeat the 30 seconds.

What's the two things you notice? You arent getting as much shake through the smaller straw. Plus, your head was about to cave in, face getting red from trying to suck the same amount of shake.

How does that relate to this page? Well the Shake ("Battery") - the Straw ("power wire") - You ('amplifier').

When a wire is too small for an amp, the amp will start to overheat, go into protection, burn up, or shut off. The reason is because the amp is not getting enough current to operate the circuits as efficiently as it was designed.

Well, what size wire do you need for your amp? Using Stinger Electronics as an example, I have a quide you can use to find your proper wire size.

Watts Wire size

0-200 10Gauge

201-500 8Gauge

501-1400 4Gauge

1401-3000 0Gauge

3000-Up Double Runs of 0Gauge accompanied with a battery installed near the amps.

Im not going to go into any specs or details on wires, but I do recommend getting your power wire from Quality audio store, and not a "Big Box" store. A lot of the time the wire purchased from big boxes, may claim to be a certain size, and $ 20 for entire kit. But I guarrantee that if you take a section of your "Econosized" wire to a audio store, and compare it with their wire of the same gauge, you will notice that theirs is bigger and better.

In the end, buy a quality wire, especially if you have a name brand amp, you won't regret it.