Help wiring old sub tube
Thread Starter
Race Director
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 11,608
Likes: 780
From: Eustis ( Area 51 Bat Cave ) Fl
Help wiring old sub tube
I am not what I would call a high end car stereo person, odd since I have made a living with music,
Anyway here goes the question,
A friend has this older self amplified bass tube, he wanted me to help wire it into his stereo,
( aftermarket ) because I do enjoy doing custom wiring on vehicles,
Well, his head unit has TWO sub woofer rca outputs, the tube has what I will call one input, just two wires. ( total 4 wires on sub tube )
According to the instructions you run a hot wire and ground wire to the built in amp then you ran two other wires, one to the neg of one rear speaker and one to the pos or the OTHER rear speaker,
Seems to me this made for a mono sub, okay fine many people run subs in mono my question is can and if so how do I adapt his two rca sub outputs to this tubes two wire input?
Anyway here goes the question,
A friend has this older self amplified bass tube, he wanted me to help wire it into his stereo,
( aftermarket ) because I do enjoy doing custom wiring on vehicles,
Well, his head unit has TWO sub woofer rca outputs, the tube has what I will call one input, just two wires. ( total 4 wires on sub tube )
According to the instructions you run a hot wire and ground wire to the built in amp then you ran two other wires, one to the neg of one rear speaker and one to the pos or the OTHER rear speaker,
Seems to me this made for a mono sub, okay fine many people run subs in mono my question is can and if so how do I adapt his two rca sub outputs to this tubes two wire input?
Tech Contributor
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 7,035
Likes: 134
From: North Augusta, SC
The RCA output wires are a line-level signal. The wires at the speakers are speaker-level signals. If the tube doesn't have an option for RCA inputs, then you can't use the RCA's coming out of the radio (the volume would be way too low).
I'm not sure what crossing over between the left/right rears would do to the radio, if it were my car I'd just connect both tube wires on one side of the car.
I'm not sure what crossing over between the left/right rears would do to the radio, if it were my car I'd just connect both tube wires on one side of the car.
Thread Starter
Race Director
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 11,608
Likes: 780
From: Eustis ( Area 51 Bat Cave ) Fl
The RCA output wires are a line-level signal. The wires at the speakers are speaker-level signals. If the tube doesn't have an option for RCA inputs, then you can't use the RCA's coming out of the radio (the volume would be way too low).
I'm not sure what crossing over between the left/right rears would do to the radio, if it were my car I'd just connect both tube wires on one side of the car.
I'm not sure what crossing over between the left/right rears would do to the radio, if it were my car I'd just connect both tube wires on one side of the car.
Do you mean the built in tube amp will not pick up the signal from the rca outs at all?
