Originally Posted by karfreek

Are you listening to your Stock Bose/GM system and wondering why you can not get any sort of Bass from it. Well, its not your deck, not the Bose amp, in most cases it will be the Bose 6x9'* in the rear deck. The Bose 6x9s are worthless after a short while, they can not handle the output from the Bose amp under the Head Unit.

The cheap and easy fix is to replace the Bose 6x9 with a QUALITY (No wal-mart end cap specials) aftermarket 6x9s. The install is easy, just remove the rear grilles by pulling up and toward the front of the car. Remove the (4) hex screws holding down the Bose 6x9s, unscrew the harness from the Bose speaker, undo the connections and install the aftermarket 6x9s in the reverse manner. Remember to match the polarity on the speakers. You will be AMAZED by what you hear!

Ok, so you want to rattle some windows, but want to keep the Bose stuff because
the imaging is good and the highs are not too bad. Plus you like the stealth look of the stock deck and the steering wheel controls. This can be acheived by using a aftermarket amp and quality subwoofer. Now you need to get the signal from the HU to the amp. You are going to need a line level converter for this. They can be gotten for $20 at a stereo shop.

Now, your first thought will be to tap in by the 6x9s. This will work, but the results will be disapointing. The Bose Dynamic Equilization pumps up the bass output at low levels to the 6x9s. This will cause the aftermarket amp to over amplify the low frequencys at low levels giving you bass that will not stop at low level. It is very annoying. Plus the output from the sub will be muddy and inaccurate. Adjusting the gain at the line level converters will NOT help this.

The solution is to tap into the outputs at the headunit BEFORE they get to the Bose amp. Remove the factory HU, and remove the large Black/White harness from the back of the head unit. Turn the harness so the wire side of the harness is facing you. The rear speaker outputs from the HU are the (4) wires in the cluster in the white section of the harness. There should be (from right to left) a brown wire, another brown wire, a blue wire and a black wire. The brown wire on the right is the (L+), the next brown wire to the left is the (L-) wire, the blue wire is the (R+) and the black wire is the (R-). Splice into these and then connect the converter respecivly. Now, the yellow wire next to the orange one at the end of the black harness will work as the amp turn on lead if you splice into it. Make all the connections to the amp and sub. Remember to use the correct sized wire and fuse.

Enjoy the sound!

Karfreek

(Karfreek not responsable for any damage caused by use of the above suggestions)

Originally Posted by boott

This all makes sense and I do want at minimum the 6X9 upgrade on my 00 SSEI. The only thing that still worries me is that BOSE says DO NOT intergrade aftermarket speakers with that system. I also had the same statement given from several car stereo places. And they would make money on you!! Not only are the Bose 2 ohm speakers hard to match since all aftermarket are 4 ohms but everybody strongly believes that the Bose system will be severely miss tuned by adding aftermarket. For me it'* hard to believe that a speaker could cause any damage to the system but why is everybode else convinced it will?. I do want to retain my system but do not like the weak speaker set up.