I was wondering why you never jumped in on this one

Just to recap - in order to determine if the wires in question were in fact speaker wires, i pushed the end of a paperclip into each one at the harness. I then touched the ends of a crappy 4ohm speaker i had laying around to the paper clips to complete a circuit. The speaker played so I now had my answer. This is admittedly not the way to go about testing electrical circuits but was the only way I could come up with. These are the results:

In a 2000+ bonneville there is a wiring harness under the kick panel trim of both the driver and passenger side. You must remove said trim from both sides and the passenger'* under dash sound barrier/hvac vent. This is a very simple location to tie into your factory audio wiring without the hassle of running the wire in and out of the doors or tearing apart the dashboard. In the wiring harness on the side facing the center of the vehicle there will be two wires grouped together. The driver'* side is brown and yellow. The passenger'* is Dark green and Light green. These are your speaker wires. I cut each one and installed bullet connectors on them so I could reconnect them in the future. I then connected my to amp and return wires between them and now I have the ability to power my front speakers from my amp with very minimal disassembly of the vehicle.

I will take pictures (hopefully in focus ) so you can see the finished product.

Overall I highly reccommend this as an ideal place to tap into your front speaker wiring.

Ok this is exactly what I did

Under the dash is definitely at the top of the list for connecting in to the audio system (with the type of install you're doing). Both the SE and SLE have connections on the left and right side of the dash. As I recall, the LF, LR and RR pass through the left side while the RF is the only one routed via the right dash. The SSEi or GXP (because of the amp) carry all audio signals to the amp through the connector beneath the steering column back to the rear of the vehicle. Speaker wires are then disseminated through the car from there.

It'* good that you found everything okay. On a semi-regular basis, GM has a tendency to run wires of the same colour to a single connector. Because of this, it'* always preferable to know the specific cavity on the connector you're looking for. One other point of some help is that speaker wires are always twisted pairs (in GM vehicles). Not many conductors in the vehicle are like this. GM does this because it will provide a form of signal shielding.

I did notice the twisted pairs and was quite certain that was what I wanted. I wish I'd had that info earlier. Oh well live and learn.

According to MECP, testing speaker leads with a battery is fine practice. I've never had a problem doing it, in the 4 years of professional installation I've been doing.

Now I just have to figure out what to do about the amp. In your experience, what would cause an amp to start smoking like that? It was only hooked up for 2 minutes! I doublechecked all the connections to the unit and there were no bridged terminals or switched wires. All of the gains/levels were down and none of the fuses blew either. I'm still trying to get hifisoundconnection to talk to me.

Darcy'* (ddalder) point is that one may test something that ARE NOT speaker wires and that can be very bad for other parts of the electrical system. It won't necessarily hurt a speaker, but what if you goof and the wires you are applying this voltage to are NOT the wires you thought they were. Besides, just because you can find some four letter acronym that says its a fine practice, doesn't mean you should forgo your own common sense.

I agree with Darcy, it is foolish to subject the electrical system of modern computer operated automotive systems to low impedance power sources that could potentially have reverse polarity or higher voltages than what they are designed for.

I don't care who told me I could - I STILL WOULDN'T.

I also STRONGLY recommend against anyone doing it in their own car. There are other simple ways to test that are MUCH SAFER!

There are practices that professionals use that are not necessarily the way an amateur should be advised. Pros have training that most amateurs don't. There are even pros that shouldn't be using certain practices (you may have even met some of them - if you get my meaning ).

I am a member of the MECP (Mobile Electronics Certified Professional) which suggests that testing speakers with a battery (1.5V) is fine if you KNOW that your only testing speaker leads. It does not recommend testing random wires like that. I know what your saying and I agree, but don't discredit an organization you may not be familiar with.

I apologize if it sounded as if I was discrediting anyone! Since this is a written media, there are invariably many things left out of communications for brevity.

I can see that it can look as though I was discrediting MECP but I actually have no idea what they recommend or not. Whether they say ya or nay to the procedure is not important to my point. My point is just because somebody says to do something, doesn't mean you should stop thinking for yourself.

It is important to always think through what you are doing. In cases like this when things are accidentally left out (for the sake of brevity) like the caveat of KNOWING you are testing speaker leads, one isn't led to believe that there are no potential problems...

The beauty of this forum is that when I post something, but forget that there may be fundamental concepts left out of my post, somebody else will fill in the blanks. I try not to take this as an insult because I know we are all up to the same thing here.

For sure man, no worries Ive made the mistake of poking the wrong wire lots of times. Luckily Ive learned the easy way and not had to replace a ECM or something. But lets not jack this guys thread

As far as the amp, thats exactly how it would react if you were to spill liquid in it, therefore shorting it out. There may have been a sloppy solder joint inside that jumped the wrong pins together and cooked it. Transistors can be destroyed instantly by reverse voltage, and it wouldnt take much for an internal short to cause that.