Alpine sucks

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turbosam6

My cars suck
Joined
Jul 24, 2001
Messages
3,356
I've just about had it with them. I have an Alpine amp in my trunk, like a flex5 or something, 5 channel amp. It wasn't cheap. I had it for about a year, and it crapped out. The connection where the fuse goes was bad. So the car stereo shop sent it back, and it took forever to get it fixed, because thats about the time that whole deal with the boat unloaders being on strike thing was going on. So I finally get it back, and now its doing it again. They had the nuts to charge me $80 to fix it the first time, and now its gotta go back and be fixed again. I ain't payin' squat, but I bet it takes forever again. This amp is in the GN, so it has literally about 3 hours of use, and I'm not driving very much load with it. What a pos. They should give me a new amp for free, since this thing sucks so bad. The dude at the shop tried to tell me its because my car leaves so hard. OK. Like my best 60' time was a 1.75, and I'm pretty sure the amp wasn't even in there at the time. Whatever happened to customer service? The shop should be giving me something and they should take it up with Alpine. I hate cars.
 
That sucks Sam. I hope you can get things owrked out. I have always used Alpine products and the only problem I had with one was that ones of my head units got stolen. As you can see this wasn't Alpine's fault. Basically I'm just saying I have had nothing but great products from them. Sounds the stereo shop that you are going to sucks. Hope it all works out!! Good Luck
 
There head units have been good to me but I have never owned one of their amps, probably won't in the future either. My friends always had bad experiences with them. Hope you can get them just to trade you off the floor so you don't have to wait again. Good Luck
 
I work with Alpine for many years and hardly had any problems. Its usually installation error that causes amps to fail. Are your power connections putting tension on power strips?
 
No, its installed well. No stress on any wires. We zip tied the fuse to the power line, so as to provide some upward force on the fuse. It works now. Its mounted vertically. When you touch the fuse, it makes contact and comes on. Leave it to some old hillbilly engineering to fix it! I'll send it back when the car gets put up for the winter.
 
IMHO you may have gotten a lemon, and every company has them.

I have bought so much Alpine equipment I cant even remember it all and never had a problem with any of it. I used to work in an Alpine shop also. Try and deal with Alpine directly, or find another Alpine authorized shop, sounds like these guys are yankin ya...
 
yeah u got a lemon, my alpine amp and sub are awesome. I havent had them for long, but know people that have had great luck with them. My 10" sub hit HARD for a 10, it will out bump my friends fosgate 12 and its in a truck
 
I'd have to agree, you got a lemon.
I have had a MRV1000 for about 6 years now, all trouble free.
Never any problem with their head units over the years.

On the flip side, I got one of the few lemon amps McIntosh ever made. (Those of you who know McIntosh gear can pick your jaw up off the floor...it really did happen!) The thing lasted about 2 weeks in my car. I took it back to the shop and they gave me a totally new one, no questions asked.

I blew up a pair of JL Audio 12's under warranty. I took them to the shop, and they exchanged them for ones right off the floor.

Find a new place to take it to.
 
Alpine has a good reputation on their products, building quality car audio products.
 
Does anyone know where I can contact Alpine myself, like a phone # or e mail? I'm tired of this local place, bunch of old kids who don't care. These guys are like late 30's, livin' at home, still cruisin' the high school scene, drivin' imports, you know the type. Maybe I'll get better results with Alpine myself.
 
amps are easy to take apart. It's just two soldier joints. Why not fix it yourself? I had an MRV400 first edition v12 amp, and it was literally brought up from a sunken 45ft yacht on the ocean's floor...in salt water. It was given to me to "see what it does" as a joke. It was filled with muck and smelled bad. So I removed the main board, pressure washed it with aluminum wheel cleaner, let it sit for a week...I put it back together, replaced the blown fuses. It worked! after a spraybomb rebuild on the sheetmetal pieces that were all corroded, she was good as new! The kid that bought my GTI was all excited it had this rare alpine amp in it, little did he know it's history :)
 
I had great luck with the older alpine decks, and some of the V12 Amps. But I currently have a 5 channel V12 in the GN, and it just doesn't seem to be all that great. The 8" sub I have doesn't hit at all, and moderate to high volume it seems to clip the mids/highs. I was actually going to go get some new speaker wire and wire my RF separates to the deck itself and just eliminate the amp/sub altogether & look for an amplified sub. The system in my elky sounds MUCH better with an older pioneer deck driving some 3.5" Pioneers, 6x9 Bostons & an amplified 8" bazooka.
 
I think Alpine was top notch 15 years ago ... they never seemed to adapt to the "visual" aspect of the other headunits. Their stuff always looked old and was high priced.

I personally never had issues with my 1 h/u I bought ---
 
old school gtq400 and kenwood amps 1.55 60ft never any problems,my buddy swears by them though but it isn't the 60ft for sure.
 
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