conor.davis

iTrader: (20)

I bought my trans am with an aftermarket deck in it and only the front and rear speakers work. The middle ones in the rear seat area don't work.
I pulled out the cd player and there is a wireharness and everything was hooked up.
Could this be the wrong wire harness, it had the monsoon in it?
The guy I bought it from said the reason the steering wheel controls didn't work was because he didn't install a 'monsoon wire harness'.

DAVE00

iTrader: (10)

First off, what year is your car and what HU do you have installed? Any aftermarket amps or are you using the HU's amp for power? As to the wheel controls you must have a translater/module to communicate to the HU what the controls are doing. This is easily done with one of the PAC units and which one all depends upon your model/make HU as some convert the signals from the controls to IR signals to the HU and some actually plug into the back of the HU if your HU has an option for a wired remote. Get us some more information as some model years used a separate stock amp for just the sail speakers (rear seat/middle of the car) as GM considered these subs and ran them off their own amp. Let us know more so we can help.

conor.davis

iTrader: (20)

its a 98 and it has a pioneer deh-p5000 ub . I don't think it has any amps.
The speakers were not working because they were unpluged because they were blown... just pulled one out

There was a ribbon wire not plugged in or wired up behind the HU smaller than the other one hooked up to the HU. I'm guessing thats the steering wheel controls?

The snail speakers said delco 4OHM/4OHM 7M52D4

Should I just replace with same speakers or do you know of a decent priced aftermarket that is better?

conor.davis

iTrader: (20)

Should I just get 4 alpine SPS-170A 's?
Will that sound good or better than stock?

SparkyJJO

iTrader: (11)

Actually, the stock monsoon system has all the speakers run off the amp. Well, mostly... They ran the tweeters on the fronts straight from the HU for some reason

The amp is a small pile of crap next to the spare in the hatch.

I replaced all my speakers, my HU, and rewired stuff. The HU running the front and rear speakers directly sounds much better than through the stock crap amp (partly because of matched ohms vs mismatched, 4 is standard but GM used 2 on these systems), then I stuck a small amp I got from a friend where the monsoon used to be and used that to power some other 6.5" subs I pulled from an old PC speaker set in the sail panels. For being a literal "hack job" and costing almost nothing, it sounds pretty good. MUCH better than the stock system, for sure.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

The Monsoon amp is not "crap". It may be underpowered but it produces clean amplification of signal fed to it so it's probably the only part of a Monsoon system worth keeping. Of course, rewiring and using your own amp will usually give you more power, hence better sound but the Monsoon amp can be kept when doing an inexpensive upgrade.

The impedance "match" of speakers to amp has nothing to do with sound quality. The only thing it affects is output power levels and 2-ohm speakers connected to a compatible amp will put out twice the power of their 4-ohm equivalents.

BTW, the Monsoon amp is an eight channel design. In your Camaro it powers all of the speakers including the tweeters. In a Firebird it powers eight channels of speakers which include dual voice coil subs in the sail panels leaving no channels left to power the tweeters - so they are connected to the head unit.

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

What about pre monsoon 10 speaker systems?
are the door 6.5's run off the head unit or the amp?
I know the amp in mine is next to the right rear seat behind the panel but when i put a monsoon hu in mine the only speakers as far as I cna tell that did not work were the sails, I jumpered the amp feed to a key on in the radio harness to get it to turn on.
What I am getting at is are the door speakers run off the amp or not.
the previous owner had put kicker 6.5's in the doors and they sound like ****, can i tie into the leads in the sail panels for more juice?

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

The older 10-speaker premium audio system is somewhat different from the Monsoon. You are correct - the amp in the 10-speaker system powered only the sail panel subs. All other speakers ran directly from the head unit. However, I would not connect to the amp output for your doors because, like the Monsoon, the amp supplies only low frequency output to the sail panels.

disc0monkey

iTrader: (10)

if it powered only those two speakers could you replace it with say a 500W aftermarket sub amplifier by using the original amp's wires.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

I suppose you could but the factory wiring might be a little too light for that. Also, you'd have to rig a remote turn-on of some sort because the factory amp uses signal sensing on its audio input to turn on.

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

Mine "pops" when you turn on the radio would I be better to jumper the pink wire on the back of my radio with say a speaker output instead of the yellow Keyed wire?

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Put down the crimping tool and step away from the car. You never cross connect a power wire with a speaker wire. Not unless you want to let out all the smoke in your system (once you let the smoke out of electronics they don't work anymore).

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

I jumpered ther pink amp wire to the keyed radio power, this is what a local shop told me to do?!

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

The factory amp has constant (battery) power not switched power. It turns on when it detects an audio signal coming from the head unit and turns off when there is no audio signal so you don't have to worry about it draining the battery. Whoever told you to connect it to switched power at the radio is an idiot. That's also a likely source of your popping noise.

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

what would you recommend?

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Put the wiring back to the way it came from the factory.

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

Then the amp will not come on to run the sail panel speakers?

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Then start checking why you don't have battery power on the pink wire. Did you check the fuse? This becomes a basic electrical diagnostic issue... start by testing for power and ground. If you don't have them then look for the reason (blown fuse, broken wire, etc.). Keep testing further back in the circuit until you find where things work - that will tell you where to look for the problem.

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

I had the stock factory radio in the car when I got it, the CD player did not work so I bought a monsoon radio from a fellow member here, once I put the monsoon HU in the car The sail panel speakers would no come on telling me that the HU is different than my old,, I called a alarm and stereo dealer here in town and the way it's jumpered is the way he told me to get it to work.

If the pink is the amp signal how or what should I do to get the amp to come on other than the way it is...jumper the pink to a speaker out is what I was getting at I know better then to just run a 12 volt to a speaker wire but will it (speaker out wire) trigger the amp to come on with the monsoon HU

taguy94

iTrader: (9)

whitebird00
Help me out here man please????