First off, this is going to be a work in progress thread. At present, I do not have any of the parts required, but some of the more essential parts will be on order by the end of this night shift.
My aim here is to get rid of my problematic Mac HU and replace it with an Alpine CDE-145E, while keeping the McIntosh amp. I could get away with a CDE-143E, but I like some of the higher spec features on the 145 (namely the 9 band parametric EQ).
To do this, you will require the following:
Aftermarket head unit, with at least 4 RCA Preouts. Front & Rear. The third set of preouts on my head unit for the Sub channel will not be used yet, but is more of a provision if I want to hook up a separate sub/amp from the Mac one. Useful to maintain the sound quality of the mac system while adding some punch if you wanted.
You can use a HU with only 2 preouts, but you wont have any F/R fading, and will need a set of RCA splitters, as the amp still needs 4 input channels to work properly.
13 pin DIN connector (Can be bought from most electronics stores).
You will also need some cable of some sort to solder from the DIN connector to some RCA connectors listed below. My suggestion is some CAT5e or CAT6 ethernet cable. The better the shielding and closer the factory cable twisting is kept to the RCAs/DIN connector, the less 'noise' you will get. Remember to only earth one end of the shielding, otherwise it wont shield. It will probably be easier to earth the DIN connector as the aftermarket RCAs wont have an shield connection point.
You will also need a small gauge wire to run the remote amp power up. Connect this to the aftermarket unit's remote amp wire (Usually blue or blue with white trace, can't remember which) and then solder it to the relevant pin on the DIN plug.
4x female RCA connectors that are solderable. You will need to run a short set of RCAs from the head unit to these connectors, and solder the new cable to the back of these.
Thats pretty much what you need in parts. Basically you want the following:
Aftermarket head unit -> Male to male RCA leads -> Female RCA plugs soldered to your nice new Cable, which is then soldered to the new 13 pin DIN plug -> Stock McIntosh amp.
From what I have read online about this, soldering the DIN plug is a rather large pain in the arse. Do yourself a favour and dont skimp on the quality of this plug. Cheap ones tend to melt the plastic holding the pins during soldering. Also might be good to have some freeze spray handy when soldering to cool everything down after soldering each pin.
So the pinout diagram...
Heres how you need to have it (Colouring listed is for CAT5e)
Pin Function Colour
1 Front Left + Blue
2 Front Left - White/Blue
3 Front Right + Orange
4 Front Right - White/Orange
5 Amp Remote Power Separate
6 Ground Shield
7 Rear Left + Green
8 Rear Left - White/Green
9 N/C -
10 N/C -
11 Rear Right + Brown
12 Ground Shield
13 Rear Right - White/Brown
Note there are 2 shield points. Easiest way to deal with this is to separate the overall shielding on the CAT5 cable into 2 bunches (which will make it easier to solder to the pins anyways)
Something to note is the factory speakers (with the exception of the sub, which is 4 ohm) are 8 ohm. Almost all car stereo speakers these days are 4 ohm. So if you change the speakers out, make sure you change all 4 otherwise your front/rear bias will be out by a fair whack. The other thing that may help after changing the speakers out is to up the gain on the sub channel (you just upped the noise on the 4 speakers by dropping their resistance, so why not up the noise on the sub too).
http://nzlamb.wordpr...subwoofer-hack/
These amps are a nice unit, putting out approx 38W RMS per speaker channel and 72W RMS to the sub channel. From what I can tell these amps are 4 ohm stable, but not 2 ohm stable, so don't try and power a 2 ohm sub with this amp. It will eventually end with you letting the smoke out of the amp as one of the FETs lets go.
Once everything rocks up, I'll put it all together and post up pics as I go.
Cheers,
Ben
