Car Stereos: HELP! no sound after installing Alpine stereo in Hummer H3., alpine iva, hummer h3

Question
Hi, my husband recently bought the Alpine IVA-W203 stereo. Before he installed it, everything worked great. We had a few problems getting the sucker in there because, crutchfield.com sent us a very wrong wiring diagram. We had problems like whenever we had it wired up and we turned the stereo on, the lights would dim and go out. We looked up the correct wiring diagram and got it to where the stereo would turn on and nothing would dim out or turn off. However, there still isn't any sound. We did a speaker pop test and the speakers are just fine. I consulted crutchfield.com tech support and all they can say is that there is a factory amplifier and that we should have bought a wiring harness. But, we still don't feel any need for it. If there is a factory amplifier where is it? We don't have the "monsoon package" for the H3 so does that mean if there is still a factory amplifier would it be in the same place as it would be in the "monsoon" package? and if there is a factory amplifier what do we do? Or is a factory amplifier not even the problem? PLEASE HELP!!

Answer
Hi Courtney,

From what I can tell, if you don't have the Monsoon system in your H3, then you don't have a factory amplifier.  This is supported by the fact that you can "pop" the speakers from the radio harness; if there's a factory amp in the vehicle, a speaker pop test doesn't usually work.  If you do have a factory amp, there should be a pink wire in the radio harness, and you'd activate the amp by connecting the pink wire to the blue/white wire from the Alpine head unit.  

Your Alpine harness includes a pink/black wire.  Make sure that this wire isn't connected to anything, and that it's fully insulated and not pinched or grounded behind the head unit.  This is an audio interrupt wire; if it's connected to ground, you get no sound.  

The head unit's internal amplifier will shut down if any speaker wire is shorted or grounded.  Double-check all your speaker outputs to make sure the connections are fully insulated.  If you have one strand of wire that's come loose and is touching a strand from a different speaker output, that's enough to shut down the internal amp.  A wire that gets pinched behind the metal chassis of the deck when you push it into place will have the same effect.  

You can try disconnecting all the speaker wires, then re-connect them one speaker at a time.  If you can get one speaker working, move on to the next.  If you have a small bookshelf speaker lying around that you can use as a test speaker, that might help too.  Your factory radio harness uses the same wire colors for multiple functions, so if you have a speaker wire mixed up with a different wire, it might cause the problem.  The first thing you should do is verify that the deck's speaker outputs are working; this can be done with the test speaker.  If the outputs are working, then it's just a matter of making sure you're using the right factory wires as speaker wires, and making sure the connections are clean and fully insulated.

It does sound like the deck wasn't wired correctly at one point.  I have to warn you that there is a possibility that the new head unit was damaged if a speaker output was connected to a factory wire that was carrying voltage.  If you can play a test speaker from the new head unit (making sure all unused speaker wires are insulated and not touching each other) then you should be okay; but if it won't play a test speaker, then it's likely that your new head unit is damaged.

Good luck!

Brian