[romclean]

I'm almost finished installing an amp under the passenger seat and I'm looking for something to tap for the AMP turn on line...

Ideas ? it's my last connection before I put the Forester back together. Can I connect this to anything that has 12V when the car is on ? could I just tap into the power lead for the head unit ?

Thanks in advance - I gotta get this thing back together before I forget where all the screws go

 

[sea-scooby]

Tap into the 12v outlet in the center console. It has a 12v switched (acc) wire.

 

[romclean]

The wiring harness holds that end of the console down pretty tight to the floor, making it a PITA to reach, did you cut the retaining clip to loosen up the back end?

 

[romclean]

Done! thanks sea-scooby. Just finished putting it all back together...

Probably need to do some additional tweaking as I've got a couple issues.

1. Very light hissing...not surprised with an amp, but I could use any advice on silencing it.
2. Had to turn off the 'beeps' on the navi, the beep sound is so loud it's penetrating. I wonder how loud Betty (the navi voice) will be..now she'll be just like my wife !?!? but with the right information..lol
3. The phone volume (bluetooth via navi) is a bit loud even on it's lowest setting, wondering if anyone else has this issue and found a fix. I'm guessing this is something I won't be able to correct.

 

[sea-scooby]

Glad you got it working! As far as the hiss goes, it could be a weak ground, or maybe the gains are turned up too high. Try adjusting the gains on th eamp first, and if that doesn't work, thry moving the ground to a different location.

 

[Ally]

Have you earthed the amp as close as possible to the amp? with a nice fat cable onto a clean point.
Is the hiss with the engine off?
Assuming most amps are the same when i did mine i had to turn the gain right down, turn the volume on the stereo to around 3/4 then turn up the amp gain up until it the point where it would start to distort then back it off a bit.
Hope i'm not teaching you to suck eggs.

 

[romclean]

sea-scooby - I used an 8 gauge ground cable to the E-brake bolt under the center console, it seemed like a really solid ground location, cable is about 12 inches to the amp under the carpet.
Gain.. yea, I mighta had that set on ludicrous speed..oops
so I cranked it all the way down just as Ally suggested and then set the volume to 28 (max is 40) and then turned the gain back up, it 'sounds' like the max volume the speakers can handle at about 20% gain.
So with both of your suggestions I'm in a happier place..still a faint hiss but not bad...the only thing I want to change now is the factory tweeters - not sure if it's the soundproofing or the better door speakers, but now the tweets sound really "bright" - I'll mess with the eq for a few days and see if I can find a better setup.

 

[SVXdc]

I just ran across this thread while searching for something else. Sorry I didn't see this back when you started it.

For the amp turn-on, you could also have tapped into the Red wire on that combined forward/reverse I made for you.

I remember we had talked about using the pin on the Navi's harness intended for the remote-on for the OEM sub. When you found that your harness already had a wire there I forgot to suggest building the combined harness with the red wire "broken" too.

I've recently heard from someone that the power antenna wire (pin 14) on the Forester/Impreza Navi is 'on' whenever the HU is on, so that pin may also work for an amp remote-on.