Restoring Factory Amp, worth the trouble?

General Discussion
,
1

I recently had an aftermarket amp short out on me and don’t have the $300 - $400 to replace it.
I opened some panels and found the original amp as well as what I believe to be some kind of adapters for it.

I thought it would be a simple unplugging the new amp and plugging the inputs into that into the original and the outputs into the output of original but I now see that there are already in and ouputs into the original, in fact the original was outputting to the new amp.

Is this common? And for someone who has never messed with car audio would it be complicated to restore now that I have found the original amp?

Thanks for any help (I do have pics if necessary)

2

I’d check with Crutchfield. Though they’ll most likely want to sell you a new amp… that would be a good place to start.

3

So, can you unplug the outputs from the aftermarket amp and plug them into the original amps output connectors? Hopefully, they used adapter harnesses (versus wire splicing) so the original plugs are still intact. BTW- I haven’t seen an amp input that can take another amp’s output signal level. Usually a preamp output goes into the amp input…

4

If the output of the original and the output of the new amp were connected together, that’s likely why your new amp shorted out. Generally that’s not a good idea, unless the amps are designed to have the outputs paralleled like that. Double check on that wiring before buying a replacement for the new amp. Also check the new amp’s insides looking for fuses, maybe just a fuse has blown.

5

I agree with George. Unless you’re dead certain the amp is fried you might consider going over all fuses and so on.

Seeing as how you’re not familiar with car audio what about taking it to some stereo outfitter and having them look it over.

I would guess that it would not be too expensive for someone in the know to eyeball this and sort it out. I’ve done a bit of car audio work but I’m not familiar with what system you have or even whether the stereo head itself is factory or not.

6

i would think finding a used factory amp would be easy. find a boneyard car. having a functioning factory system is nice. vs a cobbled together system where someone replaced the factory amp with aftermarket

7

A good aftermarket system is not necessarily cobbled together. If done several aftermarket systems that were extremely clean and nice installs. With the wiring kits you can get that plug in directly to the vehicle’s wiring system so you don’t have to do any splicing makes for a nice neat install.

Unless your vehicle came with a high-end system - it’s not too difficult to install a good aftermarket system far better then the factory one.

8

is the acura system an oddball system like bose or infinity? sometimes the simple fix is to replace the broken parts with similar parts. maybe someone replaced a bad factory amp with aftermarket and now both amps may be dead. im not saying the aftermarket stuff is not better than factory. whats the quickest way to get what is left in the car running?

9

Odd Ball???

10

Check the fuses and if that’s not the cause, dump the aftermarket amp until you can get a cheap replacement…

11

Thanks for all the replies guys, I was thinking of just unplugging the aftermarket amp and trying to put all the speaker wires back to the factory, would this work? Honestly at this point I"m not at all worried about it sounding good I would just like to have SOME kind of stereo until I can afford to put an amp back in.