Subwoofer on 42DS not working

[spraggini]

I know this is a long shot but not sure what my next step should be. The subwoofer in our salon (installed under starboard settee) on our 2012 42DS is not working. We removed it and took it to a stereo shop and they said there is nothing wrong with it. We hooked it back up on the boat the way it was before, and still get nothing. The boat has a West Marine receiver. Not sure if that was what it came with or installed aftermarket. We are the third owners of the boat. The tweeters in the saloon and the speakers in the cockpit work fine. Any ideas? Thanks.

[zaphod]

It is hard to say without knowing how it is installed, but typically if you have discrete tweeters, midrange and subs you will also have a crossover of some type so that you are only feeding high frequencies to the tweeters, low frequencies to the subs etc. That crossover could be built into the amplifier, or it could be a separate component. It could also be that the sub has it's own amplifier built in, because it takes a lot more power to drive a sub than a tweeter. If that is the case, the sub needs it's own power supply.

First step is to figure out exactly what you have. Trace out all the wiring back to the head unit, and make sure all the connections are good.

There could be a number of problems, depending on what you have installed.
If there is an amp for the sub, does it have power?
If there is a crossover, is the subwoofer output on? Crossovers often have attenuation dials to adjust output levels...is the bass turned way down?
It's possible the crossover is dead.