I am in the middle of replacing my front blown monsoons with a set of polk speakers. I have a aftermarket HU and used the wiring diagram to bypass the stock amp for the front speakers, so I didnt have to run new wire.

Couple questions.
The polks have the built in tweeter but the speaker only has the standard 2 wire hook up unlike the stock speaker which had four. I simply put the wires together and hooked them to the speaker is this correct?

I hooked everything up and it sounds horrible, It seems like the back speakers are being overpowered and you can barely hear the front ones. the speakers are also making a terrible sound. I dont know where I went wrong, all help is appreciated.

Thanks

 

You have a new HU..so simply run 2 wires to the new speaker and hook up as normal. The stock setup has 4, because they are in fact components. The midrange is powered by the factory amp (filtered) and the tweeter by the HU.

So, run new wires from the HU...that's your best bet since the factory amp will not be giving them as much power as it could and will distort more...plus there is no easy way to just use the factory amp on new coaxials unless you wire up the tweeter and midrange protion separately..which would involve cutting your new coaxials..

It's better you use your new HU anyway, since your new coaxials are probably 4 Ohm impedance speakers and you will get the most out of them (and less distortion) using your new HU.

No because they are coming from 2 different sources... The HU was powering the tweeters while the factory amp powered the midrage component...


EDIT #2: I'm not sure what you mean you bypassed the stock amp.....could you explain what exactly you did?

 

I used a wiring diagram I got off of here. You just disconnect a couple pins and match them up with the corresponding color. in turn it bypasses the amp.

I dont really want to run new wire from the HU to the front doors, it looks like a pain in the ***.

anyone else have suggestions.

thanks
aaron

 

I fought with the Monsoon amp for about a week trying to get some speakers working. Sometimes it would work, more often than not the amp would give me fits. After all of it, I just ended up running new wires since the HU had more than enough power to provide a clean and strong sound to the speakers.

 

Actually Whitebird00 confirmed that in the Camaro Monsoon setup, both the tweeters and woofers are powered by the amplifier, but on seperate channels.

Here's the Camaro schematics:

 

Here's the rest of the Camaro Schematic.

My thanks to WhiteBird00 for finding this for us.

 

Is that all years Camaro monsoon or post-a certain year? ....I have those schematics, and noticed that...just figured Monsoon varied across years and everything I have ever read told me HU powers them (but nothing I ever SAW).....never really looked into it too seriously because there isn't a real need to know (though I hate when I don't know things).....

I think what actually convinced me that Camaro HU powers them is the first sticky up here....I started going through it for the hell of it, and noticed:

"the connector that plugs into the speakers has 4 wires going into it. the blue/light blue wires hook into the midbass of the speaker, and run to the amp. the other 2 go to the tweeter in the speaker, and to the head unit of the car."

///Next post by a TECH Apprentice:

"Glad I was able to help figure this out with ya... Like I said in other posts, I dont have a camaro so it was hard for me to answer questions on it (I had recieved conflicting info on the speaker setup there too). Just one thing as a tech note, the amplified channel is a 2 ohm channel but the speaker is 4 ohms so its running at 4 ohms which is about half the power, however since the tweeter is straight off the head unit and th head unit channels are 4 ohms, thats running at 4 ohms also."

"No they arent... They are amped seperately, with the mid being powered by the amp (rated at 2 ohms) and the tweeter powered by the head unit (rated at 4 ohms). Like we said while it doesnt match the load exactly, its good enough for what we are looking to accomplish here, and does sound better."


------------------------------------

What make/models is this true on then? I wish I wasn't going back to school tomorrow or I would look at the car itself more..

Is it the Pontiacs that had wiring like this? From my understanding, the rear sails in Pontiacs are 4 Ohm DVC rather than 2 Ohm SVC........do they do something weird in however their amp is set up that it takes 4 of the 8 channels for the subs, 2 front, 2 hatch.....then 2 for HU (assuming 8 ch still)? .......

I'm gonna figure this out by tracing wires...thats the only way, I've heard too many different things and seen too many diagrams without knowing actual sources..

EDIT: nvm...ignore whatever I just said, point is...Monsoon sucks.

here's the '95 for comparison... http://shbox.com/1/bose_wiring.jpg

 

just use new wire, i have done it and its really easy. just use something stiffer to fish the wire to the door if you have any problem. i wasted a lot of time trying to do the same thing you're doing on a bose system, except i was trying to keep factory speakers with a new hu. i ended up buying speakers and running new wires for front and rear. the aftermarket wires are also a shitload better than factory wires.

 

The HU powers the 4 tweeters (2 door, 2 hatch) in Firebird Monsoon setup. It was just assumed to be the same way in the Camaro until WhiteBird00 found these schematics. Most of the threads about Camaro door speakers was based on the belief that the tweeters were driven by HU, same as a T/A.

Monsoon was a premium sound system for the T/A's originally. When GM decided to add it as an option to the Camaros they decided to make the Camaro version a bit different. Apparently, they dropped in single voice coil speakers in the sails (instead of the DVC's used in the T/A) and used the extra coil outputs from the amplifier to power the Camaro door tweeters. They also deleted the tweeters in the rear hatch area.

The difference between the tweeter amp outputs and the woofer amp outputs is that the woofers are supposed to have low-pass filter so they only receive fequencies below about 2 KHz or so. The reason the Woofers are 2 ohms is to cheat and get about 2 to 3 dB more bass out of lesser speakers.

 

Knowing a little more history about the Monsoon system and the T/A helps this make MUCH more sense, I just never thought about looking into it even since I always just planned on replacing everything -- thanks a lot!!

 

Thanks for all of your help, ended up just running new speaker wires from HU to speakers. Wasn't too bad, but sounds WAY better. Thanks again.

Chris