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HELP! Aftermarket Install Woes with Bose - LONG STORY


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I'm pulling my hair out on this. I have a 2014 Silverado Crew with the Bose and the Bench Seat (no sub). Needing more bottom end I added a Kicker hideaway unit myself with the wonderful info shared here in the forums and got a mild boost in sound. This install was simple as I just use a few t-taps on the cables that had been identified as proper for the Bench seat bose trucks to the Front L/R out on the bose amp and fed it into my DQ-61 (overkill, but had it so why not).

 

After a few months decided that I wanted to push the envelope further. I added in my JL12TW3's and a JL HD1200 amp to replace the kicker. FAR more kick - much happier. No problems at all. Another month goes by and I convince myself that its just sad to have ALL that amp sitting there for my subs and no real partner for the rest of the sound, sooooo I decided to take everything up several notches and purchase an HD600/4, Some Focal KR2's 2-way for the fronts, Focal Access for the rear fill and replaced the TW3's with a pair of 13TW5's.

 

Since this job was going to be much bigger and more $$, I decided to let Car Toys handle it (professional install and 4 year warranty on all work and hardware). They do the install for me, tune in the DQ-61 and I get car back. Sounds great... until the next morning when I crank it first thing. The chimes were hugely amped all the sudden coming out the Front Left speaker and that particular speaker itself seemed to be 4 times louder than all the rest of the door speakers! If I muted the system, that speaker had a distinctly audible and irritating Hiss. After about 15 minutes of driving it stopped and went back to normal. This happened on and off for the duration of the 200 mile trip I had to take that day.

 

I pulled over at one point and just looked at what could wiring wise to see if something had wiggled loose or what - Nothing, but I did find that when I 'tapped' the HD600, that the speaker would pop in and out of high 'boosted' volume as noted on the ride. A further look found that the Gain control for the amp wouldn't adjust the levels at all.

 

Brought it back, was told they would swap out with replacement, but would need to wait. advised them I was going on an 800 mile family trip and could not be without sound, they installed a 'loaner' 900/5 for me and the whole trip was great, no problems! I returned back the following week and had them replace the 900/5 with the new 600/4. Drove off that night after they closed, went to bed, got up next morning SAME PROBLEM!

 

Brought it back to show the techs, swapped preouts from the DQ side of things, outputs from the 600 and determined that the problem was isolated to the Front Left output channel - not seemingly speaker or LOC related. So they agree to replace it again but tell me that at this point, two HD600's had been 'bad' - which seems unlikely and that the DQ in the equation was not there original equipment, even though they had wired it in for the install so that it could be something with that unit. They told me I'd have to schedule a few days out to bring in, so I told them I had an MS8 for another vehicle I was going to swap in.

 

I removed the wiring on the DQ side and found that it looks like they were summing 6 channels of input (3 pairs) and were no longer using the T-tap config I had originally done - to be honest I assume this might be because the Front left/right taps I had done may have only carried signal enough for the Subs that I had done and were prob missing some high freq they needed for the rest.

 

So I used the wiring they had used and wired it to the MS8, tuned in and sounded phenomenal! GREAT sounding unit (off the topic, but had to be said). So I brought the unit back a couple days later and got my hand slapped (and in retrospect, rightly so I suppose) for changing out the DQ; they said they really wanted to run tests on the signal coming out of the DQ to determine if it was wigging out and killing the HD. I expressed my doubt of this given that it had never killed the Kicker, or the 1200 in my previous setup before they had worked on it, nor did the 900 die during the loan time - but I too had/have a hard time thinking that I had two bad new HD600's - those things are beasts!

 

So, long story coming to close, tech and manager get together and basically strong arm me into agreeing to let them take out the MS8 and install an LC7i prior to replacing the amp again (3rd amp), that way its all their equipment installed and anything happening should be rightfully covered by them. A 3rd amp failure shouldn't be something to occur with that and if it was, they would not be able to blame my original parts or install job.

 

So... I did... Just got truck back, drove home, sounded great - not quite as great as the MS8 made it obviously but clean and awesome none-the-less. So, now, I get up this morning turn car on and guess what.... The damn front right channel immediately starts up in its 4xnormal set volume for all music, chimes everything. 10 minutes down the road it stops and is back to normal. if it follows pattern this will most likely start getting more frequent later as I drive to our remote office for business (100 miles) and I expect to find again that the HD amp is fried.

 

The question here is... WTF? What is going on? Can ANYONE offer insight? I'm out so much money on this that its ridiculous and now I find myself REALLY missing the stock bose setup with just my simple Sub added...

 

The only thought I have is could there possibly some wiring funkiness from the bose to the LOC that they did when they are summing all the additional channels, are they all necessary for full signal feeds? If they wired it by the charts of what is in the Bose w/Sub 2014's vs the Bose w/o Sub 2014 would that cause this problem. Do I need to pull the plug on this and cut all the financial loss and ask them to wire everything back in to stock and replace the bose speakers back into the doors/dash? This has me sick - any thoughts and advise I can take back to them at this point to be armed with knowledge before I'm told its my problem or end up paying more money for further non working solution...

 

:nonod::nonod::nonod:

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  • 1 month later...

I had the same problem when wiring aftermarket radio to bose system. The problem was due to the Bose OEM amp pushing the speakers while the aftermarket radio had a built in amp and was pushing extra wattage.

 

They have harness adapters for this problem. But there pricey cause of the overrated Bose system.

 

I did not want to spend the money so I bypassed myself and sounds way better now.

 

I cut the speaker feeds from bose amp, and ran them straight to aftermarket radio.

 

Perfect. Problem solved.

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