I have a Rockford Fosgate Power 750x that has been happily married to my Empeg for the last 6 years. I got in my Jeep the other day and when the Empeg fired up, what I heard was not music to my ears. The right channel seems to almost no significant sound coming from it. The left channel has noisy, crackly program from the Empeg. I tried the Empeg in the dock at home and it seemed to pump out the tunes just fine. I flipped up my back seat and plugged an iPod directly into the amp and got the same results as before: almost nothing on the right side, and crackly distorted program on the left. This held true for both the front and rear sections. I also did find at this point that if I turn the iPod volume all the way up, the distortion nearly disappears; as I back off the volume, the distortion comes back.

I thought I might crack the amp and have a look around inside. I imagine I could somewhat easily fix it, if I could only determine where the problem is. I have a general understanding of electronics and amplifiers, but not a whole lot of practical experience repairing them.

My first guess is that something in the input stage of the power amp is failing/has failed, where if I crank up the signal going into that stage, it's enough to compensate to a degree. Anyone else have any thoughts or advice on diagnosing?

Cheers,
-Randy