Wet Sounds WS 420, System Noise

Hey all,

Have a new-to-me boat with a solid Wet Sounds system in it. But the system has a lot of noise, I've narrowed it down to the WS-420 but based on everything I've read on this forum and others it shouldn't be causing any noise...

Quick rundown on system. Boat has a SYN 4 running 4 ohm bridged powering a pair of Rev8's on the tower, a SYN 4 in 2 ohm stereo powering 4 pairs of XS 650's and a SYN 1 powering four SW 10 FA subs that are wired in parallel for a 1 ohm load. I'd have preferred the subs to be 2 ohm so I could wire them series/parallel for a 2 ohm load but oh well...

Anyway, lots of noise coming from all speakers. Not alternator or battery whine either, it always there whether the boat is running or not. Checked all wiring and grounds, tried new shielded RCA and ran new power and ground for deck and WS 420 directly back to batterys. Still had noise. I tried unplugging the source RCA's going into the WS-420 from the deck to see if it was coming from the deck, still had noise. I finally gave up and removed the WS-420 from the system and plugged the RCA's directly into deck, noise is gone...

Is there anything I can check on the WS-420 that might be causing it to be noisey?

Hiss, whine, static?

What generation WS-420, is it an SQ?

If it also there with the EQ in the AUX mode and hard wired to your music source?

ran new power and ground for deck and WS 420 directly back to batterys.

Are you absolutely sure ALL the audio shares the same battery reference?

Is there anything I can check on the WS-420 that might be causing it to be noisey

System gain level can invite noise

It's static noise, sounds like white noise. It's an older (about 4 years) WS-420, not an SQ. I'd ran new power and ground back to the batteries for the WS-420 and the deck thinking it may have been a ground loop, I connected this to the amp distribution block for positive and directly the battery ground where the amp grounds are connected for ground. It didn't change the noise at all.

I did try using the AUX in on the WS-420, still had the same noise.

System gain is around 1/2 on the two SYN 4's and 3/4 on the SYN 1. I'd tuned this myself to have max output with the deck at about 80% volume. There's a very small amount of noise present with the RCA's plugged directly to deck, but you need to be very close to speakers to hear it. When the WS-420 was in the system you could hear a loud hiss/static anywhere in the boat, volume needed to be above 1/4 before the static wasn't noticable.

I was wondering if the lower RCA output from the deck (older Clarion M475 with 2 volt RCA's) might be causing the noise since the WS-420 is a line driver that puts out 5 volts? Since the noise was present even with the RCA's from the deck unplugged I thought that would have eliminated the noise coming from anything but the WS-420...

I had the same problem. Bout the same as yours. Single source ground for 3 amps, deck and EQ, gains mid way. Couldn't figure it out. My stereo guy chased it down in a couple hours for beer and a pull. Cleaned up some connections Plus a new RCA and it went away.

There's a very small amount of noise present with the RCA's plugged directly to deck, but you need to be very close to speakers to hear it

This tend to indicate the noise is in the system already, but then its amplified by the EQ, which is expected.

The line driver portion of the EQ is most beneficial when you have a low input.

420 may be faulty... May need a professional to look at it, which normally something of this nature needs trouble shooted by a real professional in a elimination style format. Anything else you receive here will be guessing and incoherent double talk...

This was a known issue with the older 420.

Lot of guys were able to fix it by adding an arc audio line driver between the head unit and the 420 . Yes it doesn't make sense to need a line driver when the 420 was supposed to have one built in , but it worked for some. Probably because you could then lower the gains on the 420 . If you do a search you'll find a ton of posts relaying this same scenario. I experienced it myself way back with 1st generation 420 and some pro 80's. Ditched the 420 and went with PAC LC 1 to get some zone control. The new 420 SQ version eliminated a good majority of that hiss/ambient noise. As stated it was a known issue.

Thanks for the replies, I'll just run without it for the rest of the year. I'll try to find somewhere locally that can take a peak at the 420 and see if there's anything wrong with it.