Hey guys...I have an 89' Bonne SSE, with the Performance Sound option, and I have a bundle of questions I was looking to clarify. Here we go

I have an aftermarket deck, and I did not install it myself. Regarding the gain control, it is wired to an amp under the passenger seat if I'm correct? What speakers in the car are wired to this amp? When they installed the deck, they told me the "amp" in the car wouldn't work with aftermarket decks, and it was making a humming sound. They replaced it. Are there two amps in the Bonne? Is the one under the seat the only one, or some seperate amp for this gain control?

If I still have this amp under the seat for the gain control, would it be wired to my aftermarked deck? Or would I have to do this myself? To my understanding I can use this amp under the seat to wire up to a subwoofer amp in the trunk and the gain would control it?

Basically, I'm asking for a rundown of how the Performance Sound system works in my Bonne SSE.

Also, I've noticed the lack of bass output since I got the aftermarket deck. It'* a Panasonic CQ-C1300U. With the bass set to +12db (max) and the treble -12db (min) it has decent bass. Is there any reason for this to happen? After reading some posts here it is to my understanding that the bonneville has good stock speakers, for the performance system. The headunit has 50wx4 output and a dual preamp.

whew...that was a mouthful.

Thanks for anyhelp guys!

Here'* the low down. From what I hear, your premium sound system is similar to mine. The amp is really nothing more that another small wattage (sub-20 watts, I'd guess) channel added to the car. They create this channel externally because you can't change a mass produced item (the radio) easily. And apparently, they did this because they thought people could really tell the difference (laugh).

That said, your radio outputs a regular signal to the amp, which isolates and amplifies the bass, and sends it to the same speakers that the actual rear channel of the radio is outputting to. This is done with the addition of a 2nd speaker coil in that same speaker.

So, what you might try is connecting those two coils in your speaker in series, creating, in effect, an 8 ohm speaker, I believe. Your head unit can probably output just fine to speakers between 4 and 8 ohms.

However, you wouldn't want to hook the amp back up beacause it'* purpose is to supply a small amount of power, which happens to be bass. You're new head unit can supply much more power, so even if it was hooked up, you wouldn't be able to tell cause the HU would drown it out.

You also say you're not getting any bass from the HU. This is pretty common, and most people can test it by using a song that is known to have good bass, and also by using a good version/bitrate (if you burned some MP3'*) of this song. Obviously, make sure bass boost is on if the unit has it. To get a ton more bass, you might look into some aftermarket 6x9'* for the back. They're cheap, easy to install, and make a big difference.