adding sub amp to factory JBL luxury system

[justin146]

I have done some searches before I asked this. Plenty of people have asked the same thing but none that I have found have gotten a straight answer. I have a 1995 Eddie Bauer with the luxury audio system that has a factory sub and 6-disk changer. I am adding another sub and amp while retaining all of the factory equipment. Where do I get a signal to feed my amp? My amp and subs are installed waiting on an answer to my questions. Correct me if I am wrong, but arent the factory speakers fed a high pass only signal? This means I cant use my line-converter there. What adapter will I need? Where can I get it?
PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!

 

[DarkFox1]

I had this done about 2 years ago by circuit city.. what they originally did was come off the sub speaker wire and put it into the new sub amp's input.. bad idea.. they didn't realize exactly how much the signal was amped.. so.. after it started clipping really badly, I took it back and they took a speaker wire off the front left channel and put a line level converter on it and put it on.. it worked, but I didn't have bass in things like rock where you may have a bass guitar on the right sie of the vehicle.. that was no good either... basically.. the only tihngs you can do is either run a line level converter off the factory amped sub line and turn the gain on that converter waaay down (you can get one at circuit city or basically any audio shop) or come off of something like the speaker channel. At any rate.. it would sound worlds better to simply ditch the factory headunit and hook the new sub and amp up the proper way. it costs you your factory sub and CD changer, but its well worth it in my opinion. The quality of my eclipse's FM was above that of my factory CD and CD qualty on the new unit's is WAY beyond even that quality. Good luck

 

[justin146]

not only would I loose the cd changer but I would also loose my phone. It is part of the stereo. I am a professional installer who could probably figure this out, but doesn't really have time with all of my other projects. I am keeping the stock stereo in for a good reason...I will get me more buisness (I hope anyway) from people seeing what I can do with a low budget.

 

[QuadCam]

use rcas off the stock head unit!!!

justin,

the stock head unit has a high voltage/low level output.

take a set of rca cables; the the ends off it. stripp back the wires. now, splice the left and right, positive and negative leads on the rcas into the correct outputs from the headunit. this works perfctly. it may sound scary, but it works. you will probably need to set the gains fairly low on your sub amp though. the output from the ford HU is pretty high for a low level signal.

you said that you are an installer. this should be all very basic to you. i'm sure you can figure out the rest.

Andrew