New Head Unit, no audio. HELP!

[Calvo]

I made the decision to replace my stock head unit with a BOSS Audio BCPA9. Note, all the audio worked perfectly fine I installed the head unit my self and routed all the wiring... almost. I got the speakers connected, Battery power, accessory power, and ground, all the speakers are connected and no audio. Now I think the car I own, a 98 Tahoe, has an amplifier. And with an amp, there is an "Amp Feed" wire that I believe needs to be satisfied with power from a wire from the new HU. Now please correct me if I am wrong about what I just said or what I am about to say about these two next wires. This "Amp Feed" wire is pink and it should be satisfied by a Blue & White wire from the new HU that is labeled "Remote output" it is a 12v 500ma wire. I've connected the wire and nothing... but when the car is powered on and I touch the leads of the "AMP feed" and "Rem output" I can hear a click in the dash and the subs in back sort of bump a little bit. This tells me that the amp must be getting power, but still no audio from the Stereo. Now some say that the the solid blue wire which is very similar to the Blue w/ White wire should be connected instead, actually it is very unclear which is which and they are confused to be the same much of the time. The solid blue wire is labeled as an "Antenna Output" and is also 12v 500ma, it actually does the same Dash Click, and subwoofer bump that the other one does when everything else is powered. However the difference is that when the key is removed and the solid blue and pink wire are still connected, the dash starts clicking sort of fast on and off, it almost sounds like a blinker but faster. This clicking persists until key is inserted again and turned to the run position or when the engine is running, then the clicking stops. There seems like there should be power to the amp, but alas... still no sound. Really I am stumped I don't know if the amp feed is the issue or even where I should be focussing. If any one has experience wiring these head units can I have some help? What do I do. I went down a big rabbit hole in this post but I just want audio, if its something I didn't cover I'd love to hear it. Any help is appreciated!

 

[H2814D]

Run the speaker outputs from the head unit directly to each speaker and see if that solves your sound problem. If so, just re-route all of the speaker wires to the speakers and bypass any amp already in the vehicle. If you don't get sound, the speakers may be the problem. The 80 watts of power the head unit supplies should be plenty for your setup.

The antenna output power wire may be for a powered (up/down) antenna that you likely don't have on your vehicle. You should be good with leaving it entirely disconnected.

 

[df2x4]

The factory amp in the Tahoe/Suburbans only runs the middle two speakers in the rear passenger doors, the two front doors and the 4x10s in the rear roof are run directly off of the head unit. So it sounds to me like you've got bigger problems than the factory amp not being connected properly.

IIRC the turn on wire for the factory amp is blue, but don't quote me on that. It's been a while since I did the head unit install in my 'burb.

Did you buy the correct harness adapter? This stuff should all be labeled in their diagrams. I seem to recall connecting the wire labeled "power antenna" in the harness adapter to the remote turn on lead of the head unit, but once again don't quote me on that.

 

[Calvo]

I've been through the stock Stereo harness diagram backward and forwards. Touching wires together randomly has a very low chance of stuff breaking btw. Before anything else, a fuse will go out before the magic Smoke decides to pop its head out . Anyways I think I need to buy the harness and do it that way, if anything, I should have done more research on those harnesses, they seemed sketch to me at first and I thought they were a cheap shortcut, quite the contrary actually, the aftermarket harness seems like the more legit way of going about things.

 

[LVJJJ]

Get the wiring adaptor!
I been making changes to my radio as the stock one was sounding awful. First went with a JVC single din using the dash adaptor. THe JVC was too complicated for me and didn't sound that good so that's in the trash. Just bought a Retrosound Santa Cruz which has a head that fits in the stock location and the amp goes under the dash. I was able to wire both of them up real easy by buying the wiring adaptor for the JVC and the Retrosound came with one. I recommend getting one, they are available all over the internet and are cheap and easy.

Nice to know why the rear door speakers weren't working, didn't know the underseat amp powered them. Not sure if there are wires from the Santa Cruz to route to the underseat amp to drive the rear door speakers. There's some RCA connectors I don't know how to use, have to look into that. I don't like the sound from the upper rear-rear speakers, no bass. Since they are a tight fit and no room for bigger ones, how does one wire bigger speakers somewhere? I've got some 6, 8's and 10's sitting around.

 

[Calvo]

Okie Dokie boys, thanks for all the help… In hind sight I should have just bought the wiring adapter, this would have saved me a few days and lots of head scratching. The issue is that there are two grey wires in the stock harness that do very different things. One is the “+ LF speaker” wire, the other was a “Fuse out” wire, I had them switched, and no audio. Once I switched them back everything worked fine, I realized the two blue wires would have done roughly the same thing any ways so that wasn’t the issue at all. But I figured it out without the adapter/wiring harness, but to all who are planning of switching their stereo, save your self the trouble and get the $10 wiring harness off Amazon or something. Would have helped me a lot!