speed8

Hello

I'm upgrading my CDR-23 to a Becker Cascade and swapping the Bose Amp for an Alpine PDX-5. Just wondering if there is a pin out diagram for the Bose Amp so I can plug into the speaker cables.

Also I remember seeing a post on how to access the alarm blinker on the dash for fitting the GPS unit but I cant find it now. Anyone know where it is.

Car is MY03 996tt with CDR-23, Bose Amp and CDC-4 (MOST)

I'll post up with pictures when I get done.

Thanks in advance

Andy

ETA: On a UK car is there a switched 12V supply anywhere in the centre console to tap into? The CDR-23 doesn't have a switched supply.

Basically a lot depends on which MOST Bose system you have. There is the stock version 4 channel & the Bose upgrade sound system M680 which has the 6 channel Bose amp. In terms of amps you have two choices that I might suggest. Many posts talk about the Alpine PDX5 which is a four channel amp plus a mono 5th channel for the sub. If you use that amp it will work fine with the sub even though the sub is one ohm. Simply turn the gain down on the amp and adjust it with the head unit. Many folks say that amps are not stable below 2 ohms but this seems to work just fine at least for the sub. You'll need to check the impedamce at the harness after you disconnect the old amp to verify the resistance in your speakers. You'll find the wiring diagrams on this site. In my case the rears were 4 ohms while the doors & dash were 2 ohms each. Therefore I wired in series the doors & dash to get a balanced load of 4 ohms per channel. The sound is outstanding & I have left the factory gain settings of the Alpine except for the sub as described. The head unit has so many controls I still have not gotten them figured out so I am going slowly but I am liking it alot. My sub in the passenger footwell was not powered so another way that would work would be to use the din wire from your head unit for the sub which may make you more comfortable than using the 5 channel amp to power the sub. In that case you could save a few dollars by getting a four channel amp. You'll find some wiring notes above that may help as I had a tough time figuring out what I was going to do. As an alternative you might consider a JL 6 channel amp which I believe has no stability restrictions eliminating any rewiring but of course the HU would need to support the 6 channel setup & very few do. The only rewiring necessary is at the harness & consists of just two jumper wires to connect the doors & dash in series plus the wires to go from the amp to the speakers also at the Bose harness. Like you I am not all that into the audio but wanted GPS Bluetooth, voice controls so I could shift change channels & talk as well as ipod. I threw in a rear view camer while I was at it. Last but not least I was pleasantly surprised to find out these old ears really can tell a differance between what I had & what I got.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'll probably go the 5 channel route and the Alpine looks pretty compact. I'll tackle it in a few weeks when I get some time to look closer at it.

Hello

I've just bought an X50 turbo and unfortunately it has MOST (early 03MY). I have a Becker Cascade sitting in the garage that I would like to use and have been thinking about how to go about it... Getting another amp to replace the MOST one is unavoidable it seems but after that it seems a little trickier in places without changing a bunch of speakers too and I don't really want to get into that as I mainly only want Nav/Bluetooth and adequate audio.

With a 5 channel amp could you run the door and rear speakers through the amp but the dash speakers from the head unit. I could run the fronts in series but is there any degradation in sound quality? I've been told you could get back emf issues due to differences in the speakers.

The main problem seems to be with the sub. The Bose sub is 1 ohm which is an unusual impedence I think. Question, is it 2 x 1ohm subs in parallel or is it 2 x 0.5ohm in series. If the former then surely they could be converted to series and run as the 5th channel on the amp (could you put a resistor in series instead?). Or.. the Bose amp is a 6 channel I believe meaning there should be another amp for the sub somewhere. Does that mean you can just take the head unit sub out to the OE sub amp and use the 1 ohm speakers? Does something happen to the signal in the Bose amp other than converting from fibre-optic to copper?

If I can get the answers to some of these questions from somewhere I'll take a crack at it next time I'm home.

Cheers