I just printed this out! while the old guys i know tell me "Hotrods dont need no radio, listen to your engine"...Well, Im a musician. soooo. Must have, plus chicks dig tunes Good, Simple & Clean. Thanks Ryan!
Maybe not, but neither are ANY of the radio stations. Around here anyways. We run the RediRad system in our '56 F-100 and my Dad's '38. I loaded up old radio shows of Wolfman Jack and some of the old Cruisin' albums and it's like going back in time. Very HAMB friendly. Aloha
Nice set up, looks as if i could hide that very easy in my A build for some tunes. I wonder if it will play loud enough to be heard over the lakestyle headers? Does it rock out fairly loud Ryan? if not , might be cool for just hangin out, to have something to listen to when parked I'll go back and listen to your post #55..i didnt see that when i first commented
Nicely done... I like it. there are some pretty decent 5 channel amps out there. Would work great for your idea.
Very crafty. Love it. Out of sight, without disrupting the nostalgia feel of the inside. Just keep the bumping of JT down to a minimum.
I use the redirad in my 62 corvette with wonderbar tube am am is so static prone and the wonderbar drifts so I'm constantly fine tuning it
I ordered a PAC LC-1 for my '59 last night. I have all the other parts to use the headphone jack on any mp3 player... Soon! I'm switching to an electric choke, so I'll have the stock choke knob location for the "volume". thanks. - Joe
I did this in my '39 years ago, just a simple headphone jack in between the seat to an amp and hidden speakers. Not to date it but it played my Sony Discman (you remember those?) It's simple and bulletproof. Since I live in the midwest we carry a small radio for bad weather, saved us driving into a tornado warning on the way to St. Paul on year.
Great article. I have done this mod and it is a great way to get hidden tunes. Another option for hooking up a iPhone / iPod / MP3 player is to use a RCA>3.5mm jack. You will lose the option of charging but you will gain volume control. Here is a link to the one I bought: http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10218&cs_id=1021804&p_id=5598&seq=1&format=2 Shad
This is a good tech. I followed a similar one up and with a bit creativity I fitted all that inside of the original radio. Hook up one knod to an on/off switch and the other to the volume control. Wired the inside light of the radio to the dash lights and splitted the output so I could use a 3mm jack for my blackberry or an IS76 for my ipod. Sound comes thru 4" polk speakers..the sound is great with nice fidelity, stil gives me some bass, not much but enough and I bet it can fool more than one looker out there. The blackberry gives me the option of AM/FM/Satellite radio and quite a few other application and the ipod enough storage for a lot of music commercial free. This is easy enough for someone like me with no prior experience to follow.
What did you use for the off/on switch? That is a great idea! I was thinking of doing this in my '57 using the original radio bezel/dial and then using one of the knobs for volume control like what you did. I was going to leave the other knob rigid but then your post came along. Also, since you are not using the ipod flat connection, do you now have 2 places to control the volume? I am planning on using the 3mm jack too as I just have my kids old mp3 player - they have the ipods! But that's enough for me.
I used a rotary switch from cole hersee ($10) but you can use a wiper switch (single position, about $5 on ebay) With the 3mm jack I simply set the volume on the highest for the blackberry (in your case the mp3 player) and dial the volume as needed with volume control on the radio. There are IR remotes that you can connect to the ipod and I believe to the mp3 player, so there is no need to have your glove box open (in my case that's where my blackberry or ipod sits)...and only operate it via remote to switch stations or songs.
I did something kind of similar, despite the fact that someone hacked up my dash insert for a tapedeck. Only, instead of using a charger or a volume control, I just used a splitter and Di'd my zune into an amp. Sounds good, I'm running a couple of mtx 10"s in my trunk. I'll hide them (and go to nicer speakers, and throw a 5x7 in my dash like the one you used) when I get my trunk done. I also plan on hiding a cig. lighter to charge all of my electrical needs. That, and replacing my stock dash panel and radio faceplate.
Nice tech man.... I had to look at the diagram.....I missed how ya were turning the amp on without a radio "remote feed" the first read through..... I need to do this on a couple of cars just to update the old cassette decks....haha
Excellent thread! I was recently thinking of a way to get tunes in my Merc. Instead of an I-pod I want to use either Sirius sattelite radio or an I-phone to play Pandora. I roll with a 12 volt generator though. Hopefully I can get an amp that will work. Great tech. and photos fellas! Thanks!
back in the '80's worked as an installer and to keep the ohm load from dropping and overheating the amp, if you want to hook 4 speakers to a 2 channel amp you can wire it as shown.
Here's another tid bit I learned over the last couple of days of using the system: The first day every thing was groovy. Sounded great. And then, I started to develop some static... especially when driving with a passenger or when I had something laying on the passenger side floor board (my brief case). My initial thought was that I had a bad ground. I chased them all. No improvement. And then, I started to look at my wiring. In an effort to keep everything clean and sanitary, I had zip tied all of my cables from the firewall to under the passenger side seat where the amp is located. It all, obviously, went under the floor mat and that stock sound deadener/insulation stuff. The amps power cable was loomed right in next to the RCA cables. I figured this could cause static and separated them. Static is now gone.
Good point Ryan on the power cable static, another trick if you must run them together is to wrap in a spiral fashion the RCA cables to the amp with a 20-22 GA cable and ground it at both ends, will kill the power input noise. Learned this from running a MSD and problems when the heater blower motor came on!! MSD offers a "protected" signal cable for these problems, and it is just a pair of wire spirally wraped with ground lugs, worked great!
You should ALWAYS route the main power wires away from RCA and speaker wires in any stereo install involving amplifiers. Otherwise you will have the static like you experienced, or even worse, alternator "whine" through the speakers that gets louder with rise in engine rpm.....prettty damn annoying... Good tip oldguard.... Look at newer vehicle wiring....can bus lines, aka data lines, are twisted together to prevent the signals/data from "polluting" each other....
Say, is this an Ipod only deal? Or are these cables available with different plugs for other MP3 players? Maybe a USB?
in my volvo i took out my ash tray and put in a ipod dock and drilled a hole so that the usb could be wired into my face plate
Just to clarify- You will keep the amp from overheating doing this, but you are not Maintaining a 4 ohm load- in this configuration you are actually creating an 8 ohm load on each channel. Technically the sound will be lower from the speakers and you will need to turn it up louder to get the same sound level as with only two 4 ohm speakers, but if your amp is big enough you wont really notice. If you are using a tiny 15-40 watt amp, you may not be able to get it as loud as you want. I always recommend not to turn the Ipod (Blackberry, mp3 player ect) up past 3/4 volume level. Anything more and you are sure to get distortion as you turn the system up. If you hear distortion and dont feel the system is loud enough, back the level of you ipod down and then turn the system up- it should help. Also- I build alot of systems like this for customers, and a neat little addition I have used is a Scosche Remote kit for the ipod. It plugs into the bottom of the ipod (Still allows you to plug in the PAC cable too) and then gives you a remote which you can put on your steering wheel if you want to or just keep it separate. Last time I bought one it was $30.00 and you can find em at Walmart too.
I do the same balancing act with my ipod touch with my OT car. I have a tape deck adapter that I plug into the headphone jack. If the volume on my ipod is maxed it sounds horrible. So I back it down to about 1/2 to 3/4 and it helps a lot. But if you have a system like Ryan opened with you don't have to do this balancing act and just control the volume with the one knob.
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