[LightAges]

j3rt,Jul 1 2008, 02:23 PM Wrote:

LightAges,May 26 2008, 12:58 AM Wrote:I too have a wagon and just ordered an under seat mounting powered subwoofer. It is a BOSS BASS600 and I got it from ebay as I couldn't find anything in Canada at a reasonable price. I will post back when I have it installed whenever it shows up in the next couple of weeks.
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How's that install going? Pics? How's the sound quality?
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I just got done tweaking my setup. I actually had it installed a few days ago but didn't want to post here (although I did post on another forum) till I was sure of the results.

It seems that all body styles and at least SE and SES trims come with the wiring harness for the subwoofer already installed, for 2005-2007 at least. It is fused with a 30A fuse in the engine compartment fuse box as F11. The connector is behind the trim panel on the driver side trunk/hatch area. There are two red parallel power wires to the fuse. There are two black with blue stripe wires that are supposed to be ground but weren't in my car. The signal wires are WHT/BLK and GRY/BLK with a shield common to both. White with red stripe is assigned to remote power on. There is an eight pin connector free at the head unit cable with the signal and remote power wires.

Although my subwoofer/amp has a line level converter built in, it couldn't be used as there aren't enough wires in the harness to keep all the speaker outs from the head unit separate. If your head unit does not have pre-out, you will need to use a speaker to line lever converter to feed the harness.

The BOSS600 fits completely within the cavity behind the interior panel where the factory sub wiring harness is located. It fits standing up with the driver toward the top and with the rubber mounting feet installed. All it takes to secure it is two sheet metal screws in the top two mounts into the steel structure. I cut a circular hole into the panel in line with the driver but it intersects the flip down panel. I have yet to finish off that part of the installation as it needs grill and some filler to tidy up the hole.

With the Ford two way door speakers and the subwoofer, the sound is much improved over stock and it is all invisible. No thieves are going to be attracted to my setup and it doesn't use any cargo space at all.

If anybody wants details on setting things up properly with the BOSS BASS600, I will be happy to assist.

Using a sound level meter and a signal generator I finally settled on 50Hz for the crossover. Using a PIE line level converter, I fed the wiring harness with low level signals to the BOSS600. With the speaker wiring done as indicated by the PIE schematic, the best phasing for the BOSS600 was 180°, and the level settings for the speaker in on the PIE at about 1/4, the line in level on the BOSS600 at 1/2, and the remote level control for the BOSS600 set at 8 clicks from off.

This gives about the best sound that can be expected from this setup without inserting a parametric equalizer in the chain to kill some bumps in the frequency response at around 60Hz and 45Hz. Overall though, it sounds really nice. I also have a few buzzes at certain frequencies in the door panels to chase down at some time in the future.

I also have a PIE auxiliary interface to drive the AUX input on the stock head unit. Maybe not the best way to the ultimate sound, but thieves will ignore my car. I feed the input with my HTC Touch in a cradle. 8 gigs of memory for music this way....

For those wanting to just make use of the power to the back, the two red wires can be used all by themselves up to 30 amp.