Stereo issues...... Wetsounds Rev 10/Arc Audio combo

New year and I finally upgrade to a set of Wetsounds Rev 10 tower speakers. I seem to have encountered an issue I have never experienced before. I had a set of Wetsounds Pro 80's up there for the last 5 years running off a Syn 2. Granted I am not a stereo professional, but I have dabbled in some stuff over the years with success.


Scenario goes like this. We listen the speakers and they sound amazing. After about 10 minutes at higher volume, they seem to lose the clarity, go softer, and just sound like crap. I then lower the volume and in 5 seconds the clarity and sound kicks back up. Is this clipping? I thought clipping meant the signal completely disappears and the amps shut down. In this scenario the volume just goes to half and gets real muffled. My voltage is reading good. Power wire comes directly from my perko main to the amp in 8gauge. I set the gains like everyone mentioned by keeping the volume at 75%. I have zero distortion when I have it cranked up. I feel I am actually conservative on the gain setting, but again far from a professional ear.

The amp is an Arc Audio Ks 600.2 that is running off Clarion CMD5 with a Wetsounds 420 SQ. I used Stinger RCA's and used the factory 8 gauge power and negative leads.Amp is on High pass in mono mode. Any suggestions would be much appreciated

Trying to figure this out here and am little confused

Sounds like the tweeters are going into protect mode. Need to revisit the amp/EQ/Head-unit tuning.

8ga cabling is too small for the KS600.2

What is the voltage reading?

Thank you for the reply Tigemike.


You mentioned tweeter going in to protect mode. Would that be due to a gain mismatch or would that possibly be related to something else? Is it possible they just got damaged? I will go ahead and order up some 4 gauge wire for the amp and beef that up. My voltage was 14.1-14.3v. I used the factory Nautique speaker wire which appears to be 14gauge , pretty stiff solid copper speaker wire. My crossover is set at 100 in high pass mode, used mono setting, and I didn't touch the gains on my 420SQ at all. So the 420sq gains are still at the factory default.

I am running an JL MBT -RX Bluetooth unit and an iPhone 6.

Sorry for all the questions, but the nearest stereo shop is 265 miles away. Boat stereos and stereos in general are not something popular here in the rural area.

I am running the same combo as you in my A20. Your horns are going into protection mode. Mine have done the same. My head unit is a kicker media center with blue tooth, no EQ. I have my 600.2 crossover at 80 hrtz and the gain is 50% and set to stereo. I turn my head unit up to 37 and my ipod volume is at about 75%. Horns were going into protection mode until I went from 75% gain down to 50% gain on the amp. I am also running 4 gauge power and ground wires. I know you said your tuned at 75% volume on your head unit but what is the volume of the actual music source, ipod,phone.....etc? Also, make sure the Frequency Range button is not pushed in.

Thank you all for your input.


I think I may have found the culprit. I traced all the RCA's judging from Tigemike's original post as I feel it had to be more signal/gain related. Found that my input RCA to my 420 was tapped into the purple Non-Fade line on my CMD5. I swapped that to the" front out" rca's and holy crap! The sound was such a dramatic change.

I had to back all my gains down on my two amps from about 60% to about 20%. And the sound was so much better all around. I won't be able to put it through the paces today as my boat is in my driveway and I don't wanna blow out the entire neighborhood. I took Steve's advice when retuning everything. I always run my iPhone two clicks down from max volume as I have always heard that maxing out the source can introduce distortion earlier.

I still plan on upping the power and ground guage wires. Hopefully this gets things going smoothly.

That means the 420 was getting the full, non adjustable signal from the head unit, good job moving it to the front or rear RCAs.