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How To: Connect BOSE Subwoofer [6th Gen]

DeltaOscar

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Middlesex
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6th Gen Accord 2.0
Hello everyone,

I thought I would share a small guide with what I have found out so far on this topic; of which I know a few members have been trying to figure a solution out to. Much of the information can be found in this thread

Aftermarket headunit with bose sub and amp?

My car is a hatchback (this guide may differ for saloons/coupes), and when I installed my headunit I kept hearing a click at the rear when it turned on indicating that the BOSE amp's power was still connected and turning on. However no audio came out of the sub. This mini guide shows you how to get audio output through the sub.

What You Will Need

1 x Coaxial RCA (Any male RCA to male RCA lead, yellow composite for example. Mine was about a metre long which was enough cable)

1 x RCA Y Splitter (2x Male to 1x Female)

rcaysplitter_zpsded41114.jpg


Soldering Iron, craft knife, glue gun/black tape (tools to remove passenger seat and centre console)




1.
Take coaxial cable and cut off one end. Carefully strip the wires back exposing both the inner wires like shown.

splittingcoaxial_zps06a5624c.jpg


The white inner wire is the positive (+) and the shielding wire around it is the negative (-). We will solder these to the respective bass wires on the equaliser connector.



2.
Remove the front passenger seat (4 bolts - take care with the plastic covers on the rear tracks) to allow access to the equaliser underneath.

Disconnect the green connector cable on the equaliser.

Locate on the connector the "Light Green" wire (Bass +) and the "Green/White" wire (Bass -). These are the two wires we will solder to the Coaxial. Below is an image from the Honda ESM manual showing the connections.

BoseEqualiser_zps1c2a84a7.jpg



Cut or expose the wires how you wish, I personally chose to just bare the inner wires and tap into the connections and left the connector disconnected.

example1_zps167f416d.jpg



Solder the wires, Light Green wire to inner RCA wire (positives), and Green/White wire to outer RCA wire (negatives). See pic below.

example2_zps5f438724.jpg


Once soldered, shield the wires separately. I used a hot glue gun and covered each soldered join in blobs of glue, before wrapping them separately in black tape for extra precaution.


3.
Undo the centre console and feed the Coaxial RCA through past the handbrake and gearbox. At this point you may want to remove your dash and headunit and connect the Y splitter to the respective Sub Pre-Out. I personally left mine in and using a torch and front-facing camera on my phone (yes I was lazy lol) managed to connect it this way. Once that's done connect the two RCAs together.

coaxialtosplitter_zps52d45f43.jpg



I do notice that the colour of my RCA differed. This is because the first time I cut the yellow one in half, to see the wires and realised I cut it too short. It makes no difference and connected fine.


4.
Tidy up any wiring, replace the seat and then give it a test. It should be working and you should hear a small but noticeable improvement in the lower frequencies. It may require some setting up on the headunit (i'm still figuring out how to tune mine, but it sounds good enough for me).




Please, if there are any improvements/corrections needed, do let me know and I will happily apply that as soon as I can.

I hope this will be of help to anyone looking for some direction.
 
Excellent guide mate, well done, I'm sure this will be very useful to members with a 6th Gen exec

I just wish I had access to this a couple of months ago as I sold my Sony headunit :(
 
Excellent guide mate, well done, I'm sure this will be very useful to members with a 6th Gen exec

I just wish I had access to this a couple of months ago as I sold my Sony headunit :(

Ah what a shame but now this is available you never know lol. Anyhow cheers mate, much appreciated!
 
excellent. i was looking for it a lot ! this forum is awesome
 
Thank you very much mister!
If it wasn´t for you i would probably spend some good money with an electrician, or i would have to install aftermarket hardware to replace my stock Bose subwoofer.
I wanted to keep it as original as possible and i only did it following your instructions, was hard to find this post though(99,9% of the internet says its impossible).

THANK YOU!
 
Hi thanks for your response I'm glad its helped out a few people already.

As a follow up to this I did try connecting the bose equalizer itself to the head unit through the same process which, although audio came through the sub, was not as audible as I have done in this guide. So really, the options are to either connect it up as I have shown, or for serious audio improvement invest in aftermarket audio. Something I may think about later this year as to be honest I've been quite happy with the standard speakers lol.

:)
 
Hi Dominic!

Thank You very much for your post, it helped me a lot of. I'm very grateful to You, because I have looked for it a very long time! :)

If You allow me, I would take a little addition. More people wrote, the subwoofer is a litle bit low.
I have talked about it an electric guy, and he suggested me that I try to connect to the "Audio unit input", and not to the "Stereo amplifier", because maybe the signal is too low, and it request high signal.
So I have tried it and as soon as I touch only the ground wire (7. on your picture of connector) to a negative wire of any speaker output of my headunit, it have been perfect!

So as my friend (the electric guy) suggested:

The similar steps, as You mentioned, just you have to connect the following ones of equaliser unit connector:
1. Connect the 7. wire (yellow/red) to the negative output wire of any rear speaker, or both of them
2. Connect the 6. wire (brown) to the positive output wire of right rear speaker
3. Connect the 14. wire (red) to the positive output wire of left rear speaker
(4. It doesn't need the 3. or the 10. wire)

It is strange, but for me the first step was already enough to speak the subwoofer well, but I think, both of them sould be connected to the right operation. :)

I'm not an electric man, I don't understand the whole operation of it, so maybe what I wrote is a stupidity, but it is working, and it doesn't cause any problem! If anyone think, try it!

Please, don't hesitate, and ask me, or correct me, if anyone has a question or remark! Please! :)


"Don't stop the Music!" :)
 
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