Aftermarket stereo installation

[RandallNeighbour]

I am now staring at my new aftermarket Alpine head unit in the box. I'm scared silly to start cutting wires off that molex connector plugged into the back of my Becker head unit.

My fear is that the wires going to the speakers are coming out of the amplifier and heading straight to the speakers... which means I will have to run new wires to each of the speakers instead of just soldering my wiring harness to the wires in the existing connector.

Am I right or wrong on this?

I thought this was going to be simple, but the Crutchfield tech support guy (who was nice enough to talk to me even though I did not buy anything from them) told me the wires go from the stereo to the amp and then to the speakers.

While this makes all kinds of sense, I still find it odd the way the plugs are in the back of my Becker unit.

Has anyone cut those wires and used a diagram like the one I posted above straight to a wiring harness for an aftermarket unit with success, or did you run new speaker wires to each speaker?

[bigislandboxster]

To answer a question.....Yes, the speaker wires run from the amp to the speakers.
The head unit is like the brains of the stereo system.....It tells the amp what to do.....If you take out the Becker head unit you will see that the lines out left and right, are on a yellow plug on top. The big difference between Becker and I think all aftermarket head units is that aftermarket units have DIN cables for their output, Becker uses wires. Why they did this I have no idea, its totally different. This is why I said that you'd be better off running the speaker wire straight to your head unit, I should have told you about the line out issue, I'm sorry I didn't mention it before. The other option I can see is to get yourself an aftermarket amp and keep the new head unit, or pull the speaker wires off the existing amp and run them to your new head unit. One more option just popped into my head as well......Splice the end of the DIN output cables on your new head unit, and attach them to the existing output wires which were on your Becker(the ones leading from the yellow clip). Just cut those wires making sure to tag them L and R, and you may be alright with that......These things can be a headache, because Beckers just aren't aftermarket friendly in their design....

Good luck!

[RandallNeighbour]

Lou,

OK, then I'm gonna yank my Becker unit, unplug the top yellow connector, cut those wires and label each one, solder them to the Alpine wiring harness and see what happens.

If I screw it up, I'll take it to Tweeter on Wednesday and let them fix my mess up!