Adding amplifier...what am I missing here?

[oysterville]

My beloved went out of town so I thought to myself "why not upgrade the stereo?" So I purchased new speakers for my B&O system, an 8" powered sub, and PAC APH-FD02 harness and a 4 channel amp for the front four. My hope was to not have to cut wires to make this work.

The harness plus in in-line which makes sense and the manual says the wires go to the amplifier, but the "manual" is lacking. Are those going to the high level inputs, or to the speaker outputs? Unless I'm being dense here, either option is missing the other end of the "line in/audio out" process.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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[Oscarcat]

I have no direct experience but in days of old when it was simple to upgrade a head unit, I found Crutchfield had excellent wiring and installation instructions that were specific to the vehicle I was working on.

 

[oysterville]

Thank you for the suggestion. As I purchased speakers from Crutchfield I do have their fifty page "Master Sheet". Sadly it is predominantly a speaker replacement document and only covers the most basic wiring info that I already have.

At this point it seems like my two options are either to spend $500 on the full suite of connectors from PAC or simply start cutting and extending wires on the speaker side of the B&O amplifier. Not thrilled with either, but if that's the choices then so be it. May just omit the after market amps.

 

[Darnon]

The harness plus in in-line which makes sense and the manual says the wires go to the amplifier, but the "manual" is lacking. Are those going to the high level inputs, or to the speaker outputs? Unless I'm being dense here, either option is missing the other end of the "line in/audio out" process.

The audio data to the amplifier is digital. So on the PAC connector the wires coming out of the amplifier would be your high-level inputs into your amplifier or LOC. The wires of the PAC that go to the harness are the speaker-outs from your amplifier.

Are you using something specific like a Kicker Key or just a regular 4-channel amplifier?

 

[oysterville]

The audio data to the amplifier is digital. So on the PAC connector the wires coming out of the amplifier would be your high-level inputs into your amplifier or LOC. The wires of the PAC that go to the harness are the speaker-outs from your amplifier.

Are you using something specific like a Kicker Key or just a regular 4-channel amplifier?

I'm actually just using a more traditional 4 channel Pioneer amplifier with both RCA and high level inputs.

 

[colinl]

first suggestion: return the PAC and amp. you don't need them for your project. you would benefit from the PAC for a much larger scale audio system in a Maverick. the B&O amp is plenty capable of driving most 2 way components; I'm still happily using mine.

keep using the B&O amp for your front doors and dash tweeters, and connect the B&O sub speaker line (green connector, can be spliced into) to either a speaker-level input on your powered sub, or into a line out converter with a DSP such as a Kicker KeyLoc or Audiocontrol LC2i which then would feed your sub. the LOC with DSP would be more beneficial with a standalone sub and amp, but it still could help a quality 8" powered sub.

 

[oysterville]

This is pretty much what I've decided to do. At first I cut the plug off of the wires feeding the 6x9 and ran more wire from there to the 8" powered sub under the back seat (Velcroed on the rise between the battery and the storage cubby), and it sounds much better. But then I wondered just having that AND the 6x9. So I will reattach the plug, reinstall the 6x9, and posi-loc to the powered sub to see how that does.

The B&O amp seems more than adequate for the new speakers, and it will all likely sound better after break in.

first suggestion: return the PAC and amp. you don't need them for your project. you would benefit from the PAC for a much larger scale audio system in a Maverick. the B&O amp is plenty capable of driving most 2 way components; I'm still happily using mine.

keep using the B&O amp for your front doors and dash tweeters, and connect the B&O sub speaker line (green connector, can be spliced into) to either a speaker-level input on your powered sub, or into a line out converter with a DSP such as a Kicker KeyLoc or Audiocontrol LC2i which then would feed your sub. the LOC with DSP would be more beneficial with a standalone sub and amp, but it still could help a quality 8" powered sub.

 

[Toddman45]

This is pretty much what I've decided to do. At first I cut the plug off of the wires feeding the 6x9 and ran more wire from there to the 8" powered sub under the back seat (Velcroed on the rise between the battery and the storage cubby), and it sounds much better. But then I wondered just having that AND the 6x9. So I will reattach the plug, reinstall the 6x9, and posi-loc to the powered sub to see how that does.

The B&O amp seems more than adequate for the new speakers, and it will all likely sound better after break in.

If you're just wanting to add a better sub look for an amplifier that has high level inputs and you can tap the b&o sub harness for the signal and use that. That's what I did when I added a sub in my 16 F-150 using a Alpine mono amplifier for my 10-in kicker sub. Just made it so much easier.

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