ugh...

[Hipnotic_Tranz]

Past few days I've been workin' on my radio. I finally got sick of all the pops/crackles/squeeks,etc. so I decided to get behind the dash again after I swore I'd never look in there again. So, I get back there and good god there is a mess of wires. There is an amp 30wx2 I'm assuming for the "stock" speakers. There is another 75w amp in the back....I took both those out and threw them aside. There is an equilizer in there that I want because it has a 3.5mm input on it so that I can easily plug in my MD-Player. Well, I spent forever to try to get power to it, because I didn't have any directions and only had one hot wire in behind the dash (dunno if this is normal or not :-/) Anyway, ended up needing two wires in order for the AMP to power up (there are three comming out, one red, one pink, and one black--you need both red & pink but I always tried only red or only pink)

Well, I thought that would have gotten it working because the guy that had the car before me setup RCA plugs for the speaker wires in order to put them into the equilizer. Well, no--still no sound. It's pissing me off. I would just run the speaker wires straight to the radio, but the dip-shit sniped the wires too damn close to where they go into the radio.

Ugh....I can imagine getting into car audio cause it doesn't seem that hard (when starting from scratch) and I really like the idea of a nice sounding system but screwin' with somebody elses work when wires aren't labled or anything is a real pain in the ass

[marscheese]

what I heard is a good thing to do is to cry about it he he, you know I'm joking...





or am I???

[PreDatoR]

All newer car amp require 3 wires. 1 constant power 1 switched power and a ground... Most all newer decks have a Antenae wire. Its a low currect wire that you hook up to the switched wire on the amp or to an antenae. A powered antenae. That way when the stereo comes on the amp kicks on also. You could wire it to a 12v switched power under the dash. Most decks have a constant and switched power also so it hold all your presets and time and when the car turns on the switched power kicks the deck on. Hope this makes sense its late and i'm beat ass tired... lol Now the EQ should have RCA but they should be going to the rca ins on the amp. Should be RCA's going from the deck to the eq then out to the amp. The amp will power the speakers. Unless its an eq with an amp built in but i have never seen on wired that way in the 10 years i've been playing with car audio.

[Hipnotic_Tranz]

Thanks pred. My radio has 4 wires comming out. Red, Black, Yellow, & Blue. Red hot, black ground, yellow memory, and blue for the antenna. Right now I have the EQ hooked up to the same hot wire as the radio (is this a bad move?) I could hook it up straight to the battery since I won't be using the amp in the back anymore, but I dont' like doing this because it will always be on....

Looks like I might have to use the amp (even though I think that might have been part of the problem before...but we'll see). Problem is the amp doesn't have any RCA jacks on it. It's pretty janky and the guy sorty made somethin' him-self to work. I'll just have to play around with it a bit.

While I was back there I took out the rear speakers (some real old alpines) and hooked up some speakers I knew were better. I threw the old ones out because my I put them on the ground while I was working and my little brother thought it would be fun to play with the (very brittle) paper cones. They were shit anyway....

[edit]
wouldn't it make sense that you could use the "Line Out (rear)" female RCA jacks and hook it up to the EQ where it says "INPUT" and then be able to get sound (becuase all the speaker wires have RCA jacks hooked up to them). Why the fuck can't I get anything to play....

Also, traditionally, don't the speakers hook up to the radio via bare wire?

[PreDatoR]

With an Eq you need to feed all of the radio signal through it and out to the speakers. Most EQ's don't have an internal amp and if that amp don't have RCA's on it its older than dirt. Sounds like it has a high input. Which means you would pipe the speaker wires from the deck straight to it. Or in this case it sounds like the bonehead who had it before you ran the RCA's from the deck to the EQ and had POS amps so he took RCA's cut them ran those from the EQ to the amp inputs and them hooked up the speakers. Your snap crackly and pop is probably because the inputs on the amps aren't gettin' enough juice from the EQ so its getting some distortion that would be my guess since the EQ uses a low output(RCA) and the amp uses a high input. RCA's are a low input. Your deck has all the proper wires. Now how many wires does the EQ have? Total wires not uncluding RCA's. A red and a black i'm sure are a given and most will have a switched wire on it also... hooking both the deck and eq together won't hurt anything. There is very little power fed t othe eq anyways. I wouldn't recommend hooking and amp up this way though. I run 6 guage wire straight from my battery with a 80 amp gold plated fuse box under the hood. That way if a wire rubs and shorts out it will blow the fuse under the hook. And hook that right up to my amp in the trunk. Honestly with the mess you have it sounds like you need to get a new 4 channel amp 200 watt should be good enough for what your powering. Or just ditch the EQ even though they are nice sometimes and just wire the speakers up right to the deck.

Like you said run the RCA's from the deck to the EQ inputs and if your using the EQ you will need to use an amp or amps. The EQ should have RCA's most i've seen have 3 sets of outputs. 1 for front 1 for rear and a sub set which usually has a built in crossover to filter out all of the high's so you only get the low thumping bass. Honeslty though. If i was you i would just wire the speakers up to the bare wires on the deck and ditch the EQ unless you have the money for a decent amp. You can get a decent 200 watt 4 channel amp for around 100 bones... The EQ should have a switched wire on it. Be sure that is hooked up the blue wire on the deck. And be sure the power button on the EQ is turned on

[Hipnotic_Tranz]

I was wrong, the amp DOES have rca jacks on it, but only one pair (a left and a right). So it sounds like if you have an EQ you must have an amp. Interesting. See, if I were to take the EQ out of the mix and just have the deck, how would I hook up the speakers to the deck?

And about the EQ and how many wires it has. It only has three, one red (hot) one pink (dunno really but you NEED this with the red wire in order to get power) and one black (ground). And you are right about the outputs. There is a L/R for the front, back and for a sub.

If i was you i would just wire the speakers up to the bare wires on the deck and ditch the EQ unless you have the money for a decent amp

Sadly, I don't even see how Total comming out of the back there is the big black anntena, the red, black, yellow, and blue. There <i>should</i> be others but the dipshit cut them so close to the deck that I couldn't strip them to even see what they do. I'll have to borrow a digi-cam from my buddy here and try to take a picture of it. I've started takin' apart the dash anyway so that I can get to the blower motor (the real reason I started this mess )

Hopefully pics will be able to better describe my problem....

[PreDatoR]

that pink wire on the EQ is a switched 12v power. Hook it up to the blue antenae wire on the deck. When the deck comes on that will kick the EQ on. No power is really fed through it. There is normally just a relay on the other end of that wire that closes and when that relay closes it allows the power from the constant 12v to power the EQ. Same goes for the amp. Since the amp has RCA inputs. I recommend to buy a couple RCA cables. Don't need massive expensive ones. Ones with at least 16guage wire and gold ends should be good enough 20 bucks max. Run the RCA from the proper output on the EQ to the amp them hook the speakers back up to the amp. since the dipshit cut the wires off close you might be able to contact whoever made the deck and get a new wireharness for it. Or just use the amps since you have those already.

In my car i've got all my door speakers and rear dash speakers are ran off the deck. It has 35W's a channel and it more than enough for them. I have a 300w 2 channel amp in the trunk that is bridged to 1 channel and 1 12" Pioneer IMPP in a bandpass in the trunk. My POS car has some thump and sounds good. I do need to yank out that deck though and put my Pioneer DEF5200 in though Just to lazy and the one in there works just don't look as cool...