I just replaced Monsoon head unit & door & rear deck speakers (bypassing Monsoon amp) in my 2001 SS. How can I get a signal to sail panel subs?

I Installed an Alpine HU and Focal speakers in front door and rear deck and in order to make it work I pulled the wiring harness from the Monsoon amp by the spare tire and spliced the front and rear input/output wires together, bypassing the Monsoon amp. Now, of course, there is no signal to the sail panel subs. I would like to find a way to reconnect these if possible (and then upgrade them to Kee or similar).

As you know, the wiring diagram for the Monsoon amp indicates output wires for the sail panel subs, but no designated input specifically for the sail panel subs. Where does that signal come from? I assume either the front or rear inputs. Anyone know which? If it’s the front, I imagine I’m SOL since I can’t reconnect that through the Monsoon amp (unless I trash my new Focals and buy component speakers). But if the rear inputs send a signal to the sail panel subs, I could reconnect those and be done. Or is there another way to get a signal to the Monsoon amp that would go out to the sail panel subs?

If there is no way to make this work through the Monsoon amp, what is the best way to connect the new HU to the sail panel subs?

 

The best way would have been to not bypass the Monsoon amp unless you were installing an aftermarket amp to replace it. You gave up amplification you already had along with the eight channel output.

The Monsoon amp takes four channel input at speaker level from the standard Delco head unit and processes that into eight channels of output for the door mids and tweeters, the sail panel mid-bass, and the small hatch fill speakers. That design makes replacing the head unit a simple plug-and-play job as long as you spend $10 on the wiring adapter (or you can splice the wiring but who would want to do that?)

I would recommend reconnecting the Monsoon amp if the wiring isn't damaged (and there are pigtails available to fix even that). If your only concern is the door coaxial speakers then there are a couple of ways to fix that. Best way - buy the proper components from someone like Kee Audio (you can also get CDT components from Amazon), but they're not cheap so I can understand some reluctance there. Second option - modify the coaxial speakers to become components by cutting the little wires on the speaker that go from the terminals to the center tweeter and then connecting those wires to the factory tweeter wiring. Final option - simply connect the factory mid wiring to the coaxial speakers and leave the factory tweeter wiring disconnected... you lose two channels of output but you probably won't miss them much since the coaxials have tweeters anyway.

 

Thank you very much for the detailed and informative reply.

One followup question: If I just reconnect the rear deck speakers through the Monsoon amp (but not the door speakers) will that send a signal to the sail panel subs?

Again, thanks!

 

No, it won't. The amp does not produce output to its channels based on what speakers are connected. You will have to connect the speaker level output of the head unit to the four inputs (LF, LR, RF, RR) of the Monsoon amp in order to get any output to speakers connected to the amp. The Monsoon amp has constant (battery) power and uses input signal detection to determine when to turn on and off.

So to get your sail panel “subs“ to work, you're going to have to reconnect the signal wires from the head unit to the amp and the subs to the amp. But if you're going to do that then you might as well reconnect everything to the amp and get the benefit of a little extra amplification.