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[Shotimes] A few notes on aftermarket head units

To: v6sho@yahoogroups.com,
Subject: [Shotimes] A few notes on aftermarket head units
From: Jason Hartberger <jhartberger@mail.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 14:44:23 -0400
I ordered my new Pioneer DEH6800 and got it in yesterday. Installed it 
today, wanted to share a few notes with all y'all about it.

Disconnect your stock JBL amps when you use the amp bypass harness :). 
Some of you will be going "duh..." but this did not occur to me. I got 
the metra harness, hooked it all up, radio turned on beautifully, turned 
the tuner on and it went 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' like a big capacitor 
was charging up out of the RR speaker... then the 10A fuse blew. wth? I 
looked at the connector and the +12V lead was burnt. I spent a lot of 
time looking at the wiring of the power harness, noticed a few errors 
(pay close attention when you wire that harness up!) and replugged. Same 
thing. It turned on, blew when tuner was turned on. I tried 
disconnecting all power leads with the exception of +12V and ACC. Still 
blew when speakers were turned on. (these damn fuses aren't cheap!) Then 
I thought "maybe one of the speaker wires is shorted to ground?" so I 
got my trusty multimeter out and saw that there were no shorts to 
ground, but every wire had about .2V on it. I went 'that's weird...' and 
thought about it for a minute. Then it dawned on me that the stock JBL 
amp was still powering the other (spliced) wire to the speakers! So I 
disconnected every connector there is to the amps and now it works like 
a champ.

I would also point out that thanks to the JBL amp's weird HPF and EQ 
settings, the four Pioneer (go brand loyalty!) speakers in the corners 
had far more 'bump' with the new HU even with the deletion of the stock 
sub box (with 8" MTX shoehorned in). I think there will be much more 
bump when I get a real sub amp. Eventually, I will get a 4-channel amp 
as well, but I am in the military, and if there is one thing the 
military isn't well-known for, it's the pay :-). I know HU amps aren't 
ideal, but it's better than the 14-year old JBL amp...

Oh, and the 6800 is a very nice HU as well. it compliments the colour 
tone of the car nicely, esp. with my grey interior. And not too bad a 
deal at around $200.

As... um, somebody says, just my .02

Jason

"Hey, I got somethin' special for ya! Yeah! You like that? It's really 
nice, I got it at Target. It was on sale!" -Ricky Bobby
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