DanCan81

Ok guys/gals,

Here's what I've done.

Last month I purchased the following
-Bose head unit retaining wiring harness
-front and rear component speakers
-5 channel amp
-JL 10" sub in box

I installed everything keeping the Bose head unit because I wanted to retain stock look and save some money. Well the sub doesn't sound great and I'm not impressed with the overall audio sound. So I've pulled the trigger on the following items and now have them sitting on my coffee table in front of me. I'm gonna attempt the install myself but need a couple questions answered first.
-Pioneer AVH 4200 NEX
-Harness with steering wheel control
-PAC-RP4-GM11
-Dash kit BKGMK318
-Antenna adapter Metra 40-GM 10
-MicroByPass AVH-H
-Back up camera Esky EC180-35

2 questions:

1-When I unplug the Bose amplifier, am I going to run into any issues since I am keeping the stock wiring that goes to the doors? I have already changed out the door speakers with the Focal audio ones and wired them into the pre-existing door speaker wires. As of right now, the door speakers function properly but I also still have everything plugged into the factory Bose head unit and factory Bose amplifier.

2-Do I need to run fresh speaker wires from the new pioneer head and PAC harness to both front and rear speakers or will the factory wires work?

Im gonna power the front and rear speakers off of the pioneer head and bridge the amp to solely power the sub in back.

TorchRedFred

Simple answer is if you are not going to use the Bose amps, you need to run new wiring to your speakers. If you have a 5 channel amp, I would recommend running your whole system off the amp. Just my 2 cents. Maybe some guys with more stereo knowledge can chime in also.

DanCan81

OK I did find out that there are stock speaker wires running from the doors and rear that plug into the back of the Bose amplifier. If I unplug that harness from the Bose amp and just bypass it by soldering in a short piece of wire from the head and tap into those speaker wires I wont have to rerun all new wiring.

So What I will do then is use the front speaker pre-outs from the head unit, run those pre-outs back to the 5channel amp to pick up power then run them back to the front so the Front speakers will be powered. Since the rear speakers are small I will not worry about power and them off of the amp, they will just be powered from the head unit. Then I'll bridge the rest of the amp to the subwoofer.

Tone

IMO don't use any of the stock speaker wires with an aftermarket HU or amp - I've seen this tried on a GM truck it wouldn't send sound to some of the speakers (I think because the stock speaker wiring may have been integrated with the car's grounding system, not sure though). I also wouldn't run any speakers off the head unit speaker outputs - the small amplifiers in HUs create a lot of distortion at higher (and sometimes even mid) volumes and can burn out the voice coils of any speakers in short order. Use your 5-channel amp for all your speakers.

DanCan81

I understand your point but, I am only running the rear components off of the head unit and the fronts will be off of the amplifier. I normally split the fader to 70 front and 30 rear l, so I'm not worried about distortion or burning our voice coils since the load will be low.

carnutsx2

The speaker wires in the truck went to the door chime not to ground. You can use the deck to power the rear speakers , the deck has a built in crossover to remove the bass not to say what's right or wrong but I usually run new wire with an amp install unless the wires in the door jamb are a royal pain .

daverulz

Edit: reading comprehension, I thought you weren't using the amp to fun your fronts until I read further. Rears off of the head unit is fine. I'm assuming you'll bridge the amp to run the fronts and use the sub channel to run the sub?

DanCan81

I wound up running all new speaker wire from the four channels coming off of the amp to the front doors and rear panels. I did not want to Bridge anything because I wanted to keep everything at 4 ohms. It was a good decision because the 50 W per channel was more than enough to make those focal auditors sound great.

The only problem I'm running into now is the shallow mount JL subwoofer is not giving me the amount of base I want. Don't get me wrong, it is a very sharp punchy sub and would do great for those who like to listen to rock music but I prefer to have something hit harder from time to time.

Right now I'm thinking about ripping out the entire system, putting it up for sale and going with a four channel mini amp and a Rockford 300 W powered sub. So if anyone is still following this thread is interested in a JLTW3 dual voice coil 4 ohm 10 and a Kenwood Exelon 5 x 800 amp let me know. I'll go $400. It's only 2 months old.

daverulz

Before you rip everything out, have you thought of trying the JL in a ported box? That should get you more output. Or even just trying a more efficient subwoofer? It seems unnecessary if you are satisfied with everything else to remove it all. 500 watts is plenty of power to make most subwoofers work in your system.