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Hi guys and gals I need some advice about my 2002 Camaro SS SLP with a Monsoon Radio. I am looking to replace the factory AMP with out cutting the original wiring harness, so that been said I am trying to find a factory amp bypass harness. Can someone help me find or know where to get a factory amp bypass harness.
Thanks
GM DR
This is not a good option. Replacing the Monsoon amp with an aftermarket one is not a bad idea but going ghetto with the wiring is. There are a number of reasons for that:
The biggest problem with the sound quality of a Monsoon system is not the amp, it's the head unit which produces distortion even at relatively low volume levels. So replacing only the amp will just amplify the distortion even more.
The Monsoon amp is unique in several ways - it has eight channels which are individually filtered for the specialized speaker setup, it takes speaker level input (there are a few aftermarket amps which do that but they aren't common), and it uses audio signal detection to turn on rather than having a remote turn-on wire like most aftermarket amps.
Your factory speakers have cheap paper cones and are almost 20 years old so adding more power (and distortion) will just hasten their death.
The factory wiring is very small (20 gauge), old, and brittle.
Depending on what you want to achieve in a sound system, and your budget of course, there are better ways to proceed than trying to splice an aftermarket amp into the existing system. Trust me, you will not be pleased with the results if that's all you do to upgrade.
If you think your amp is faulty then replacing it with a used one will work much better - although these amps have proven to be extremely durable over the years. Many times a supposed faulty amp turns out to be something else.
If you're looking at this as an upgrade then the amp is probably the last piece to change. It's actually the strongest part of the Monsoon system. As I mentioned, the head unit is a pure distortion machine so replacing it is the single most effective way to improve sound. Now, I know that many owners are trying to maintain the factory look so replacing the head unit may not be something you want to do but if you're open to change, a good double DIN unit can be installed to look pretty much factory installed and give you a modern system with more features and much better sound.
Of course, replacing the old factory speakers will also provide a noticeable improvement in sound. Good speakers will also handle the distortion from the factory head unit much better, if you decide to keep it. If you stay with the Monsoon setup, there are some really good options for replacement speakers that match the unique Monsoon setup. Most members here who have replaced the head unit and speakers but retained the Monsoon amp report being very pleased with the results.
Now, if you really want a big upgrade, you're basically limited only by your budget. Putting in all new components, including a new amp and a sub or two, can produce competition level results. But that would mean rewiring - don't rely on the old factory wiring for a really good system.
Sorry for not mentioning thanks I will be replacing the speakers will be using aftermarket speakers with factory deck for now. I am not sure if the factory Monsoon amp will utilize the speaker to there fullest
The doors have separately amplified components and the sail panels have subs, so just installing something like 6.5" coaxial speakers in those locations will not sound good. The doors will lose half their power because of only using one channel instead of two and the sail panels only get low frequency signal which coaxials are ill-equipped to handle (trust me, they will sound like crap).
None of those are particularly bad choices but they do have a few issues...
The Alpine coaxials for the doors are, well, coaxials rather than components so you will give up an amplifier channel in each door. That plus the 4-ohm impedance (where the factory has 2-ohm) will cut your output power in half twice. That's not as big a deal as it sounds since it takes ten times power to double the volume (i.e. your reduction will be somewhere on the level of about two clicks of your volume **** rather than cutting output by three quarters as the arithmetic might indicate). You can mitigate that by cutting the little connecting wires on the speaker that go the terminals and the tweeter and then connecting the woofer and tweeter separately to the two factory channels... in other words, convert your coaxials into components. That will reduce the power loss to only half due to impedance which is basically nothing due the the better efficiency (sensitivity) of the Alpines over the stock speakers (you lose about 3dB for the impedance but gain it back in efficiency).
The Tang Band subs are also 4-ohm instead of 2-ohm and are commonly criticized for their lack of sensitivity so you may notice more of a difference there. Again, not huge but at least one click of your volume and subs are where power is most important. But the bigger issue is probably that they are too deep to fit in the sail panels. You'll have to incorporate a spacer to make them fit without touching the sheet metal.
The hatch area speakers are merely for rear fill so any 4" speaker will do the job there. Your Alpines are more than sufficient for that.
That's good! The specs I found online indicated that it was about 4.5" deep but that's obviously not the case. I must have looked at a different 6.5" sub from that manufacturer.
Yes, I looked at those. Now, if you cut the tinned wires that connect those two capacitors to the terminal plate and then connect them to to the factory tweeter wires in the door, you can effectively convert the coaxials into components to match the original factor configuration. Alternatively, if it gives you more slack wire to work with, you can cut the wires on the both sides of each capacitor (removing them entirely) and then connect the factory wiring to what's left of the wires that go to the tweeter. From the looks of it, you may find it easier to solder without the capacitors. They are just passive high-pass filters and the Monsoon amp already provides that filtering so they are unnecessary - it wouldn't hurt to leave them on the speaker but it doesn't help either so choose whichever way makes the wiring easier.
Sorry, I figured that the wires circled here were the ones connecting the capacitors to the terminal plate but when I blew it up and looked closer, they might not be.
What you're looking for are the wires that go from the terminal plate (where you connect the factory speaker wires) to the capacitors and the wires that go from there to the tweeters. From the looks of it, the two copper colored wires above the terminal plate appear to go to the woofer's voice coil so you would leave those alone. It's really hard to see the tweeter wires from the perspective of this photo so it's something you'd have to determine from looking at the speaker itself.
Yes, it does although it still gets blurry when I enlarge to confirm details.
It's pretty clear that the red circle is where one end of both capacitors connect. That's the positive side. Now this has me wondering if this speaker has both a high-pass filter for the tweeter and a low pass filter for the woofer. That would be quite unusual but not unheard of. Based on the rating visible on the casing, the capacitor with the yellow end is a high-pass filter. The other one I can't be sure because I can't see all the markings.
In any case, follow the lead that goes from the yellow capacitor to where it goes into the speaker. You should see another wire right next to it that goes to the other (smaller/negative) terminal. Those are your tweeter wires where you would connect the factory tweeter wiring pair. Just to confirm, you should find the wire coming out of the end of the other capacitor (the one with the black/copper casing) goes to a different point on the speaker (for the woofer) and there will be another wire next to it which also goes to the smaller terminal on the connection plate.
Exactly. The only real difference between your Alpine coaxial speaker and a set of component speakers is that the coaxial runs both the woofer and the tweeter from the same single source pair of wires - you have two wires coming in to the speaker terminals (positive and negative) and there are four wires from there to the speaker voice coils... a positive and negative for the woofer and a positive and negative for the tweeter.
The factory speaker in a Camaro looks like an ordinary coaxial with the tweeter in the center of the woofer but it actually has them wired as separate components to two different channels of output from the Monsoon amp. So, if you take a coaxial speaker and can separate the wiring from the terminal plate to the tweeter voice coil, you end up with four connections available (two for woofer and two for tweeter) which you can then wire to the corresponding channels from the amp.
It's certainly not necessary and you can get relatively good sound from just connecting the factory woofer wires to the coaxial speaker terminals (leaving the factory tweeter wires disconnected) because the woofer channel actually carries full range audio signal. But if you take the time to do the split wiring, you'll end up with better power utilization and a little better sound overall.
Just out of curiosity, when will that be? I grew up in Toronto (Etobicoke actually) so I'm used to telling people down here that "if summer falls on a weekend, we have a picnic".
03-24-2021, 08:38 PM
After market AMP HELP/ADVICE 
