So I got a alpine 4channel amp, and I want to run my speakers with it. I already have rca and power wire ran to the trunk. My question is how do I connect the headunit to the amp to the speakers. What's the easiest way to go about this. Thanks.

 

If it is an aftermarket headunit you have to run the wire that tells the amp to turn on when the stereo comes on (the remote wire). The wire is USUALLY yellow, so just solder/crimp a wire from the yellow wire on the harness to the remote wire location on your amp. So now when you turn your car on and the stereo goes on, the amp goes on with it.

 

yea. i have that down. i just dont know how to run the speaker wires. if they go from HU to amp or is it speaker wires from amp to speaker? if so, whats the easiest way to connect them. and should i move the amp up under the passengers seat?

 

well if you already have rca wires going from the headunit to the amp right? then you just run the speaker wires off the amp to the individual speakers.

if youre mounting the amp under the seat make sure it doesnt hit or rub against anything metal underneath the seat. A trunk mount would be fine youll just have to run longer wires to the front speakers.

Hope this helped

 

NO DO NOT USE YELLOW AS REMOTE. Yellow with aftermarket radios that use the standard colors is a constant 12V, so if you use this, the amp will stay on all the time. The remote wire is either blue/white, or solid blue depending on the brand of radio.

As for hooking up the amp. It is best if you have 2 sets of RCAs going to the amp, so that you can still keep all your fader and balance adjustments. So if the radio has 2 sets of RCA pre-outs, then use them, if it only has one, then just split the rca signal.

As for hooking the amp up to the speakers, there are 2 ways that you can go about doing it.
1) run new speaker wires straight to all four speakers. This the better way to go, but it will definitely be more work. Running the wires into the doors can be pretty tough at times.
2) run four sets of speaker wire from the amp to behind the radio and connect them to the harness that go to the car. So the speaker wires that come out of the radio will not be hooked up to anything, and in their place will be the speaker wire from the amp.

Then that just leaves power and ground.

 

^ +1 plus wheres Marcus when ya need him? hes the Amp guru as so i heard.

 

I'm not quite sure what you are asking about so i will go over the basics when hooking a 4-channel amp you would run a power run (8 or 4 awg) then you need to run 2 sets of rca's to the amp along with a remote wire (usually blue) then from the amp you need to run the speaker wires you can do this 2 ways either run 4 individual speaker wire runs or the easy way is to run all 4 runs up to the factory wiring behind the stereo

 

That's the exact explanation I needed. What I planned on doing was running 2 wires to the rear speakers from the amp under the seat, and then the other 2 wires to the back of the radio to the wiring harness. Now my question is, how do I connect 2 rca cables to the HU when there is only 1 spot for them on the radio.

 

get a pair of y cables. it will split the single rca output into a pair. you could do it 2 ways.

1) you could get a pair of y cables with 1 male w/ 2 female connectors, and split the rca signal behind the radio then run 2 sets of rcas to the amp.

2) run the single set of rcas to the amp, then split it at the amp with a pair of y cables that have 1 female and 2 male connectors.

 

Im going to go with option 2 since i already have the rca cables connected to the radio.
2 of these??




lol. sorry for the big pic. i thought photobucket would shrink it down a bit.



this is the amp i got. how would i connect the wires to the amp using the y connector posted above