Kicker Key Amp 200.4 Install DIY Video - Do this first!

[mattsmeesh]

For those of y'all that are hooking up the Key to the battery, where are you attaching the ground wire to?

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[gaaangs]

For those of y'all that are hooking up the Key to the battery, where are you attaching the ground wire to?

I attached it to one of the screws of that harness thing that I mounted the amp onto under the steering wheel column.

 

[gaaangs]

Yes! Thanks for reminding me to undo the sub. Install went well with just a few very minor issues. I really was surprised at how small and light that amp is! Took about 3 hours total that included some sound deadening on firewall and dash/glove box pieces. The harness seems to be really good quality too! Overall, I'm extremely pleased with how my system sounds now!

Make sure you turn off the shitty Ford EQ in Forescan before you run the key set up as well. It makes all the difference in the world.

 

[djn3400]

Thanks for the clear explanation. I'm trying to do the same thing -- find a way to bi-amp the Kicker 200.4 without cutting into the harnesses -- either Ford's or the PlugnPlay. But the Metra plug? I'd be happy to cut that up.

The part in your solution that I probably don't understand is: aren't you taking the output from Amp 1 and feeding the already amplified (and filtered) signal back into Amp2? The Metra plug that plugs in between the factory harness and the after-market speaker is on the other side of the Kicker 200.4 -- it's on the output side is it not? Aren't you taking the amplified signal that would normally feed both the dash and kick panel speakers and splitting the kick panel signal off and running it back into the Kicker 200.4 via Amp2 and then out to the kick panel speakers?

If I understand the Kicker manual correctly (and I probably don't) the Kicker 200.4 applies low and high pass filters when operated in bi-amp mode, Amp1 being filtered for tweeters and Amp2 being filtered for woofers. that would seem to be an issue if you're going to use the output of one amp for the input of the other amp, as well as lopsided gain issues. There's probably something I'm not understanding.

You guys who post here are doing a service to those of us who are not tech savvy. I've read all 81 pages of this thread, and it has been very useful. The Kicker amp and PlugNPlay harness was awesome, but I'm not satisfied with the sound. It was an improvement over stock, but the dash and kick panel are gonna have to be bi amped and the rear pods deleted. IMO.

It's been a while since I've done this, so I may be a little foggy, but the output of amp1 and amp2 to directly out to the seakers. One of them goes to the dash, and the other goes to the kick panels. I don't remember which amp is which speakers off hand, but I did it per the Key manual for the bi-amp mode setting.

 

[Slim23]

It's been a while since I've done this, so I may be a little foggy, but the output of amp1 and amp2 to directly out to the seakers. One of them goes to the dash, and the other goes to the kick panels. I don't remember which amp is which speakers off hand, but I did it per the Key manual for the bi-amp mode setting.

Thanks. That makes sense. I talked to plugnplay about a solution, and he costume made a harness for me that will do what I'm trying to do. It's on a UPS truck headed my way even as we speak.

Car audio has changed a lot since I was chopping holes in my 80s Z back in the 90s. Ah, youth!

 

[MCD1Bronco]

Hey everyone. I seem to be having an issue with my kicker key.

before the key I upgraded all the speakers to kicker ks series, added base blockers to dash speakers, and added a pioneer mini sub under the front seat. This sub is wired into the front kick speakers. I also made two Forscan changes: flat eq and I forget the other but it involved 3800…

then I ordered a kit 11 from pnp and a set of rear speaker pods and 6.5” for the rear.

the key showed up first and I was impatient so I installed it and ran the auto tune. Sounded great. Then thought I’d revert Forscan changes to factory and try again. This time I was rushing and forgot to disconnect the sub. Ran again. This time Iforgot to turn off the ac. Ran again. Then I noticed the on/off seems reversed. When the kicker key dsp is on (two higher tone beeps) it sounds like garbage. When the dsp is off (1 low tone) it sounds great.

Rear speakers/pods come in so I install those and tweak some Forscan settings again. Redo the auto set up and same issue. The off position sounds better, but now this time, it reverts to on everytime I start the vehicle. So I have to leave the mic plugged in and press the button everytime I drive in order to get good sound. Am I missing something? Are there other settings affecting this? Is the unit bad? Anyway to reset it besides holding the mic button for 10 seconds? Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[MCD1Bronco]

Update:

DSP On/Off is not reversed. Just sounds like garbage when On. Going to try auto setup again

 

[Slim23]

Update:

DSP On/Off is not reversed. Just sounds like garbage when On. Going to try auto setup again

I had the same disappointment after installing the key 200.4 with jl audio speakers. DSP cranked the treble up to ear piercing levels. The whole thing sounded like shit, except at very low volumes.

IMO, after reading some other posts on this thread is: having both the kick panels and dash speakers hooked up to the same amp channel lowers the Ohms so low that the amp becomes unstable.

In your case, if I understand correctly, you're also feeding a subwoofer off that same front channel. I'm thinking the Ohms are too low and the amp is unstable, hence (in my case) the massive tweeter distortion as soon as I give it even a little volume. Even with the gain set at zero I couldn't turn the volume up at all without the amp clipping.

Some on here are wiring the 200.4 power input directly to the battery and thereby sneaking some more volume out of the amp before it clips. I think that's the wrong solution. The better solution IMO is to correct the speaker load. That's why I am going the bi-amp route, to correct the Ohms.

When I get the bi amp harness from plugnplay I'm expecting big improvements. Or it could be my electrical ignorance has me barking up the wrong tree.

 

[MCD1Bronco]

Interesting theory. And it holds up, except my sound issue is different. Definitely clips or compresses earlier than I thought. Definitely due to ohms, and no power to battery.

but this is different. At any volume, audio sounds muffled. Kind of like listening to an ear bud pulled away from your ear.

 

[MCD1Bronco]

I measured the resistance at the amp front is 2 ohm, rear is 4 ohm. I'm going to wire in some load resistors to bump the fronts to 4 ohm and see what that does

 

[Slim23]

I measured the resistance at the amp front is 2 ohm, rear is 4 ohm. I'm going to wire in some load resistors to bump the fronts to 4 ohm and see what that does

I think you're on the right path.

Correcting the ohms solved my tweeter distortion problem. After correcting the ohms and running DSP, I was able to adjust the amp gain to something other than zero, and now my 4" dash speakers are playing loud and distortion free with considerably more dynamic range than they had before.

The other thing I discovered is that the plugs Metra makes for the 4" dash speakers have the negative and positive switched. This is a known issue and can be found at various places online. All the metra plugs for the 4 " speakers that Crutchfield sent me were wrong. But the metra plugs for the kick panel speakers were correct. Therefore, the polarity between my kick panel woofers and dash speakers was wrong. Fixed that and adjusted the gain on the woofers and now I'm getting too much boomy mid-bass. But I'll tackle that after I get my sub.

Moral of the story? Don't rely on Metra plugs to have the correct polarity.

 

[MCD1Bronco]

I don’t think mine are metra. I used the same for the rears and verified those are not reversed.

 

[Ft. Worth Rob]

I’ve been reading along about the ohm loads and wondering why people aren’t just using component sets with the mid in the kick, tweeter in the dash to maintain 4 ohms.

 

[Lurker B6G]

Just adding my personal experiance to the mix.

1) replaced factory dash and pods with Infinitys.
Sounded more bright and alive, but no low end. Assumed that would be the case, but this was always just intended to be step #1.

2) Ordered PNP harness for 200.4 + Sub (Kit #11?).
After some of the same consideration that is being discussed here, decided that I had changed my mind and would go with a bi-amp plan. Modified the harness - Cut the feeds for the pods and cut the output for the pods. Looped the pod feed back to the pod output (pods bypass the amp). Took the old pod outputs (channel #2 amp output) and attached two runs for the kick panels. The input side of the old pod input (cut input) is not needed since dash and kicks both run on channel #1 input.

Cut the power and ground inputs (two each) and wired 12 ga. direct to battery with 20 amp fuse in line and 12 ga. ground to chassis under dash.

3) Installed new 6.5 inch kick woofers (Dayton Audio $30 each) using the rings from the stock speakers with the speakers cut out. So the factory connections on the kicks (channel #1 out from amp) become the direct feed to the dash speakers. Then I ran my two new leads (channel #2) directly to the new woofers.

4) Placed Infinity 600w mono amp under drivers seat. Wired direct to battery with 8 ga. wire and 60 amp fuse in line. Put the 8 ga. ground on the same chassis bolt under the dash.

5) Placed JL 12 inch HO sub behind drivers seat.

It took a little time to get the 200.4 set up, but the result was worth it. Gain is set very low and there is no lack of system volume or increases in chime volumes. Rear pod infinities are sensitive enough (93 db @ 3 ohm) to have plenty of volume with the factory amp. I would say that bi-amp is the only way to go. No worries about low impedence combination up front. Frequency overlap between dach and kicks is perfect. And the kicks went from inaudable before the set-up, to as much punch as desired after (played with more gain on channel #2 but ended up setting it quite low low to keep the kicks in balance).

Then I added in the sub (nearly unlimited bass) and the resut could not be better. I realize that some will dissagree - but I kind of mean it. I would struggle to identify somewhere where I would have done it differently. With about 6-8 previous installs, I can honestly say that being able to say this is the definition of a win.

I realize that not everyone will want a full size sub, but we took out the rear seats and so thankfully room was not a huge issue.

 

[deljaso]

Just adding my personal experiance to the mix.

1) replaced factory dash and pods with Infinitys.
Sounded more bright and alive, but no low end. Assumed that would be the case, but this was always just intended to be step #1.

2) Ordered PNP harness for 200.4 + Sub (Kit #11?).
After some of the same consideration that is being discussed here, decided that I had changed my mind and would go with a bi-amp plan. Modified the harness - Cut the feeds for the pods and cut the output for the pods. Looped the pod feed back to the pod output (pods bypass the amp). Took the old pod outputs (channel #2 amp output) and attached two runs for the kick panels. The input side of the old pod input (cut input) is not needed since dash and kicks both run on channel #1 input.

Cut the power and ground inputs (two each) and wired 12 ga. direct to battery with 20 amp fuse in line and 12 ga. ground to chassis under dash.

3) Installed new 6.5 inch kick woofers (Dayton Audio $30 each) using the rings from the stock speakers with the speakers cut out. So the factory connections on the kicks (channel #1 out from amp) become the direct feed to the dash speakers. Then I ran my two new leads (channel #2) directly to the new woofers.

4) Placed Infinity 600w mono amp under drivers seat. Wired direct to battery with 8 ga. wire and 60 amp fuse in line. Put the 8 ga. ground on the same chassis bolt under the dash.

5) Placed JL 12 inch HO sub behind drivers seat.

It took a little time to get the 200.4 set up, but the result was worth it. Gain is set very low and there is no lack of system volume or increases in chime volumes. Rear pod infinities are sensitive enough (93 db @ 3 ohm) to have plenty of volume with the factory amp. I would say that bi-amp is the only way to go. No worries about low impedence combination up front. Frequency overlap between dach and kicks is perfect. And the kicks went from inaudable before the set-up, to as much punch as desired after (played with more gain on channel #2 but ended up setting it quite low low to keep the kicks in balance).

Then I added in the sub (nearly unlimited bass) and the resut could not be better. I realize that some will dissagree - but I kind of mean it. I would struggle to identify somewhere where I would have done it differently. With about 6-8 previous installs, I can honestly say that being able to say this is the definition of a win.

I realize that not everyone will want a full size sub, but we took out the rear seats and so thankfully room was not a huge issue.

Great write up and may end up following your lead after installing the key using pnp kit #11 harness -- and being a bit disappointed by the lack of midrange and low distortion ceiling...

I have a couple of questions for you. Did you run the key dsp setup on just the front after you had it set up, or do you just run it raw? Did you have to change the dipswitch on the key to fader = off so that it only uses one set of inputs?

Did your pnp kit 11 have an audiocontrol load generator inline with the sub inputs? I have nothing hooked to the sub part of the harness yet, but I get real strangeness when I wiggle that unit. I can understand if the wiring is loose or something, but what I don't get is the absolute strange behavior it has on the rest of the system. For now, I removed it. It was probably shorting, causing the factory amp to cut out output, cutting out the input for the rear channels to the amp...

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