Bose Acoustic Wave Blues - ll
 

I've done the search and everything but I'm not an audio electrical person and I'm about to give up to what I'm trying to do.

I'm an FD newbie (got mine 11 mos.ago) and what I want is to restore the interior to stock looking appearance as much as possible. Lately, I bought the Bose Acoustic Wave in Ebay and I thought all I need to do is hook up the existing Sony Xplod head unit to the Wave setup. I was wrong. I didn't find out until I did a search here and saw that some of you have extensive experience in solving this issue.

My current setup uses the 2 door speakers which have been replaced by Boston Acoustic, the center speakers are disabled, and I have 1 10" JL subwoofer with Alphine amp that drives it. My question is, how do I make the Bose Acoustic Wave work by just removing the JL? Can I just un-hook the JL and re-connect wave? Use the existing speaker wires and connect it to the bose acoustic wave?

I called Crutchfield and they have no idea how to make it work. I also brought it to a local car audio store but same story, can't do it!

If I'm able to make it work, I will add a smaller subwoofer to improve the sound and make it removable just to show only the stock wave speakers. I am now looking for stock bose head unit.

Thanks for any help.

first off...when you put the bostons and the sony, they probably ripped out the stock crap. All of the stock speakers had amps built in them. If your car never had a Bose system to start with you would have to buy all of the small amps for the door speakers, and for the wave. There is a plug for the wave in the trunk that connects it to the amp which is located inside the car inbetween the two bins(under teh plastic). If you dont see a white plug in your trunk on the left side, then you probably never had a Bose car. If you want to make the wave work you could, in theory, hook up the amp from the JL to power the wave. But the amp is probably too big and would blow the small wave speakers. Maybe with the gain turned all the way down and turn the bass down on the headunit and it might not blow. The stock headunit is quite a POS as well...many people that have them always complain because they dont really read CD's anymore. They dont really read burned CD's either. Honestly, if you want sound quality stick with what you have or upgrade it. Unless you HAVE to have that stock look steer clear of trying to go back to stock. ESPECIALLY if your car was never Bose equipped. I had a Bose car that was stock, and i put a completely new system into it AND it was a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS!! I ripped all of that shit out, might still have some of it if you really want it. PM me and let me know!

Check to see if your harnesses are still on....
 

If you do, then search for the bose wiring diagram. I took off all my bose componets off and just spliced my +/- wires to my aftermarket speakers.

Laters,
Jason

I hooked up a bose snake to my otherwise after market setup.

DO NOT HOOK UP YOUR BOSE TO AN AMP.

1)Read the wiring diagram
2) Connect all the power, ground wires necessary
3) connect an attenuator coming form your stereo to the bose snake.

Bose stereos are passive so each bose speaker has an individual amp to power up the signal. So you need an attenuator to bring down the signal coming from your non-bose stereo. :)

Can you please explain what an attenuator is for and where to get it? Thanks.

Attenuator:
Attenuate means to reduce in force, value or amount. An Attenuator is a device that reduces the value of something, usually the amplitude of a signal.


Every stereo shop should have these. They have them at Goodguys and tweeter. I believe the stero guys call them power converters which is actually false...

Like I said you need to power down the signal coming from the stereo because the bose amp is gonna power it up even more. Therefore, the speakers end up seeing more power than they should, and they end up sounding like crap. Picture hooking up a 1000 watt amp to a little 6" speaker, too much power right :).