We ran through some of this stuff over here, but I decided to start a new thread in the hopes that I could get some more eyes on this.

Here's what I'm doing. Someone please tell me if I'm doing anything stupid.

1. I have an empeg. This empeg has 2.0final and Hijack v347 on it. It is not installed in a car at the moment, so I also have sled indoors as well.
2. I have a tuner that I just got in the mail. I'm trying to see if it works.
3. I place the empeg in the sled, and attach the tuner directly to the 5x2 connector on the wiring harness.
4. I plug in the indoor DC source.

After I do this, I *should* be able to at least select the tuner as a source, right? I'm getting the impression that this tuner is busted.

Anyone have some good ideas about what to look at next? I've opened the tuner up, and nothing is obviously torched in it.

Thanks.

A little more information ...

I don't believe the tuner can work as I've described above, at least not with my sled. The +12V pin on the 5x2 connector isn't connected to the empeg at all - it's wired directly to the Amp Remote line (the blue one) on the wiring adapter.



Is this the correct pinout for the 5x2 tuner connector? I stole this picture from pca's PCATS tuner manual, and added the text of what I think the lines are. In any case, there is no +12V on the tuner connector anywhere, and I'm pretty sure the tuner can't work in that case.

There's a purple wire going to pin 7 on mine. It comes from pin 5 on the back of the sled. Otherwise the same (I've not tested voltages or anything), including the empty pin 3.

Yep, that purple wire is on mine, too. If you have yours around, could you verify that the blue is 12V for me? I'd really appreciate it.

So, after following wires in my wiring harness, I have discovered that the Amp Remote line is wired into a dark green line that disappears down the other serial port. I have to imagine this is the power for the other serial port.

This is probably why the amp sense line never worked for me when I hooked it up to the amp in the car - it must be broken somewhere. I ended up just hooking that amp up to the 12V power supply to get it to turn on when it was still in the car.

Sorry. No multimeter.

That's cool, thanks.

So, after some more wire tracing and stuff, I think I've found the problem, based on this FAQ entry on the sled wiring.



So, now that I've figured out that the Amp Sense line is getting no power, what do you guys think is the best way to remedy this situation? Can I just hook the whole net up to the +12V main (yellow) that the empeg is powered off of?

It looks like the tuner works. I took the wiring adapter, and spliced the yellow (+12V main) and blue (Amp Sense) lines together, so that the empeg would power the tuner. The tuner comes on and seems to work like a champ.

Any suggestions for a more permanent in-car wiring solution would be thoroughly appreciated.

Thanks to all who helped out in this thread and the other. Guess this is proof that the answers are out there, you just have to sit down and reason through it for a bit.

You should not be splicing the +12v to the amp sense line. That is a Very Bad Thing. Yes, it was useful to diagnose the source of the problem, but in the end, what you need is a properly-wired docking connector, without the mistake indicated in your photograph. Correct it so that the wiring matches the diagrams here, using the techniques shown in the video here, and you should be golden.

I'm planning on fixing it the "right way", but for my own edification, why is splicing 12V to the amp sense line a Very Bad Thing? I must be missing something here - all I'd be doing is powering the tuner (and the extra external serial) off of 12V, as the rest of the net is disconnected from everything else. Basically, I won't use it as Amp Sense, I'll use it as "tuner power".

edit: Oh, never mind, yellow will be hot even if the car is off. Duh.

edit: Oh, never mind, yellow will be hot even if the car is off. Duh.

Right. Even if you were to use the Orange (ignition) wire instead of Yellow, that would still be a bad thing because the amp needs to be turned off in a lot of situations where the ignition would otherwise be on. If you were to wire it to the ignition wire, then you would get a lot of speaker-damaging "pops" at times like engine starting and shutting off.

The amp remote line has a very specific set of conditions under which it turns on and off, and those have been carefully planned. Any way of wiring around that is a recipie for trouble.