Cloveh

Hi all,
I was just wondering about connectors and harnesses for the bose speaker system in the rear of the car. According to another thread here, 6P 250 CNA-TL is a connector that will work with the female connection on the speaker housing. Has anyone else tried this? I was wondering if I could mix and match pieces of the bose system with aftermarket items. I think the PO put aftermarket speakers in the doors, and I really don't have the time to source bose replacements for those, so I was wondering if I could keep them like that and wire just the rear soundwave into a scoche adapter for sound out of those speakers? One final question, I have a 2 din trim piece in my car around the aftermarket head unit I want to replace, but it sticks out of the slot and doesn't fit in right. Why could this be? where could I get one that fits right?
Thanks!

SpinningDorito

iTrader: (2)

I believe the thread you are referencing is one of mine.

Off the top of my head I don't remember the connector part numbers from eastern beaver, but the 6P connector sounds correct for the soundwave (ie subwoofer) in the back. The front speakers should be a 4P connection type.

The connectors in my thread are a tight fit to the stock connectors, but they will work. The tightness comes from the terminal pins that EB includes with the connectors, not from the plastic connectors themselves (the plastic connectors are a perfect match).

I can't answer your other questions because I have no idea what the state of the wiring is in your car. Are your female connectors missing everywhere?

Cloveh

Yeah it was your thread. All of the female connectors are missing on my car. The wiring is in a pretty sorry state.

SpinningDorito

iTrader: (2)

Got it. Yeah, you'll have to wire the female connector back in. I have my notes on what each wire is, but unfortunately I won't really have access to them until the weekend. Mine were cut pretty short so I had to put in some extra wiring as part of the work.

As far as mixing and matching the stock sub and aftermarket front speakers, its technically possible, but you'll have to do some custom wiring to do it "right", and even with that, I'm not sure how well it will sound.

The thing about the Bose system is that each speaker has its own amp, and the speakers are a lower resistance than most/any aftermarket speakers. This is one of the reasons that the schosche adapter is needed to get decent performance out of the stock amps/speakers.

To get good performance out of aftermarket speakers in the front, you'd need an aftermarket amp to drive the left and right (and center if you keep it).

You'll also want to find a speaker bracket/enclosure for your aftermarket speakers, of modify a stock enclosure to hold an aftermarket speaker. There are a couple of options out there for this.

The easiest way would be to run the rear left and right channels through the scosche as normal (ie, radio -> scosche -> vehicle harness adapter)

The other channels not using stock, the easiest (but maybe not cleanest) approach would be (radio -> scosche -> aftermarket amp -> vehicle harness adapter -> direct to aftermarket speakers)

How complex that wiring gets, depends on how closely you can find a spot to situate the aftermarket amp to the radio/scosche adapter. If you aren't using the bose center speaker amp, you might be able to put an aftermarket one there.

This all depends on your comfort level working with this stuff. If any of that sounds scary, reverting to stock might be easier,

Of course, this all comes with the normal YMMV disclosure. Audio installation is pretty opinionated, and everyone has different approaches and lines of thinking. This is simply the line of thinking/approach I would use if I was going to start down this path.

Cloveh

I was hoping it would be possible to run the aftermarket speakers off the head unit amp as its pretty decent. Currently, they are wired in directly to the head unit and they sound good if not great. I was thinking about wiring it like this:
Rear L and R (Head unit (HU) --> schosche --> vehicle harness (if it isn't destroyed D: ))
Front L and R (HU --> vehicle harness --> speakers)
If the car doesn't have the center speaker in it currently, I'm not going to replace it. I really just want to get the rear bose system working without redoing the rest of the interior audio wiring. Eventually, I will replace all the aftermarket speakers with the bose ones, but for now, I just want to do the rears.
Do you think the above system will work?
Thanks!

SpinningDorito

iTrader: (2)

You can drive the speakers off of the head unit directly, and it should work. The sound quality may not be as good as with an amp. Like I said, Audio systems are incredibly subjective, so if you are happy with the performance that is all that matters.

There is one pin on the adapter harness you have to move around (at least the ones that come from Crutchfield, the part numbers escape me right now) to property turn on the stock amps (which you'll want for you bose snake)

Center speaker might be tricky to drive using aftermarket if you don't at least have the stock amp still hooked up for it. That amp automatically mixes the left and right front channels for you.

Cloveh

Do you know which color wire goes to each pin on the connector? I tried to follow your pictures from your previous thread but I am worried about blowing something. The bose snake is kinda hard to find these days.
I ended up getting a connector from my local electronics store, and it is a perfect fit, the only problem is that it has 22 gauge wire already wired in it. Is this enough to carry the current to the amps in the snake?

SpinningDorito

iTrader: (2)

This is what I have in my notes (which are based on my car. There is always a chance yours is different):

These are the wires from the male (bose enclosure) side of the harness

Black -> Ground Brown -> "Left" amp 1 Purple -> "Right" amp 1
Red -> Power Yellow -> "Right" amp 2 White -> "Left amp 2"

I don't remember if that setup is looking into the front of the connector or back, but you should be able to figure that out pretty quick.

With regards to the harness side wires, this is what is in my notes

Left Rear Channel:
Yellow/Green (+)
Yellow/Blue (-)

Right Rear Channel:
White/Blue (+)
Blue/Yellow (-)

Ground: Black/Orange (there are two of these on the harness-side if I remember correctly)

Power: Black/Red

As far as I could tell, the amps are not polarity . sensitive. So it shouldn't matter how you map the (+) and (-) to what I recorded as Left/Right Amp 1/2.

It shouldn't be too easy to blow the system. The worst you could do is accidentally mix up the power and ground wires with the right/left +/- wires, just don't do that.

If in doubt, verify the 12v voltage across the power and ground wires before proceeding. Once you know for sure those are properly hooked up, you've avoided the one major mistake you could make. Anything else will become obvious when you test the speakers through your radio.

Cloveh

Alright! thanks a bunch!

rtrylvr

iTrader: (2)

I had both my amps for the Bose snake go to hell and I'm sick of trying to hunt parts down that are just going to fail again. I was able to integrate the factory harness that connects to the snake to an aftermarket amp. You do need to make sure the subs have opposite polarity of each other or it won't sound right. The design is a band pass design so the sub's are face to face inside the enclosure, so if you don't reverse the polarity on one they will cancel each other out. I'm just using a compact 100w (supposedly) amp and it seems to push them fine. I've also bypassed the amps in the front doors, added a set of 2 Ohm tweeters in parallel (which increases the impedance from 1 Ohm to just over 3) and connected it directly to my aftermarket head unit and it sounds good. Maybe a little too much midrange, but it'll have to do for now until I figure out what I really want to do with it.

b3delta

iTrader: (2)

I'd recommend removing all the Bose stuff. It's early 90s tech and you can get better sound out of some plain 2018 speakers. Just takes a little wiring in the Instrument and Rear harnesses. Passenger side is wired for a speaker already, just run the wires from the instrument harness to the rear harness for the rear speakers and you're pretty much there. Door speakers just connect to the smaller wires in the connector - not the amp power lines, and get the speaker mounts for em. Center speaker just forget about.
So you'd be running your head unit to 4 modern speakers, instead of worrying about 1990ish amps and stuff, plus drop a bunch of weight and gain room in the rear.