I did some more testing last evening, took the empeg mock-up out to the Jeep (2002 Grand). I snipped the leads to the inputs on the stock infinity amp for the rear speakers, and wired them to a set of RCAs plugged into the empeg.

I powered the mess up, and found that the empeg has *almost* enough power to drive the factory amp... It WILL work, however to get to anything above "acceptable" volume level, the empeg has to go into overdrive and starts clipping.

At 0dB its roughly "sitting in car listening quietly" volume. Listenable for sure, but would probably be a bit low on the highway.

The way I understand it, the "stock" infinity gold amp has "not really speaker level" inputs. Something that isnt "line level" and isnt really "speaker level". This would more or less bear that out.

I'm thinking I'll use a PAC-2 from tune-town.com or similar to match levels. All I really need is a slight amp-boost to the RCA's on the empeg. Anyone have any out-of-the-box (i.e. cheap) ideas on how to achieve that? (Im also gonna crack the infinity amp and see if it has input-gain pots on it somewhere...)

-Jeff

Check out the PAC OEM-1. It's designed to fix this exact problem.

OK, I broke down and ordered the PAC OEM-2 (Raw wire version of the OEM-1). I already have a harness kit, and the OEM-1 costs more when you add the cables.

Best price I could find with shipping was $36 shipped (2-day) from Crutchfield.

Next hurdle will be trying to "roll my own" steering wheel remote using the stock buttons. Gotta go dig up the FAQ on how to set the empeg tuner to recognise different resistance values....

(goes to dig out multi-meter)

Jeff

Im breaking rules and replying to my own thread, just to update some info for the "archives"...

For anyone's information:

You can (CAN) direct-wire the 4v preamp outs of the empeg DIRECTLY to the amp inputs of the stock infinity-gold systems found in chrysler vehicles. It works well, with the ONLY limitation being that the highest volume you are going to reach is about 3/4 of what you had with the stock headunit.

On mine, I can "crank it" to 0db on the empeg, and its quite loud. You would never drive it to clipping, or damage your speakers, but its sufficiently loud for even rush hour driving and 75mph on the interstate with 3 kids talking in the back. In fact, depending on content, its a little too loud, so Im tempted to send back the PAC OEM-2 without even opening it.

From what I can gather, the stock infinity amp expects a 5v peak-to-peak input signal, which it gets from the "basically speaker level" outputs of the stock deck. The stock decks that chrysler uses are all "low power speaker level" and will all run speakers directly (in base model cars) or can be plugged into the amp (in the infinity gold cars). So, basically, the inputs on the infinity amp are speaker level, but the 4v outputs of the empeg are "just enough" to be acceptable.

The only other "downside" is that you wind up using the FULL range of the empeg volume quite frequently - and thats quite a few knob twists to go from "soft, talking on the phone volume" to "crank it up". I might use hijack to "double up" the volume knotches. (can I do that, use translate to make vol+ be vol+ vol+?)

OTOH, the speakers in my particular grand cherokee (an 02) SUCK horribly (midbassy, just basically junk), and if I replace them I will almost certainly have to use the PAC OEM-2 to boost the levels. (The stock speakers are junk, but are efficient and 2 ohm, any replacements would be 4 ohm, and would likely require more power than them empeg could coax from the amp at 4v)

Comments?