Car Stereos: Nissan 300 replacement receiver, nissan bose, bose speakers

Question
Hi, my 300z head unit, receiver has died. It is the one with the bose amplified speakers (1995). Do you know of any replacement unit that will work with these speakers? I've searched on line with no luck. Thanks.

Answer
Hi Danny,

You won't find an after-market head unit with plug-and-play compatibility with your Nissan Bose system.  You can make just about any head unit work, but you'll need a device called a "premium sound adapter".  This is just an interface that will convert the speaker outputs from the new head unit to an adjustable, low-level signal for the Bose factory amplifiers.  Examples of premium sound adapters are Peripheral Electronics' SVEN4, PAC Audio's OEM-2, or Soundgate's XR4PRO.  Any of these, together with the appropriate Nissan adapter harness, would allow you to get an after-market head unit working with your factory Bose speakers and amplifiers.

An alternative is to simply replace all the speakers with after-market ones.  This can be done fairly easily in your vehicle, because the Bose system uses an individual amplifier at each speaker.  This means the Bose speaker and amplifier pack can be removed, and a new speaker installed, and connected directly to the Bose audio source wires (which match up with the speaker wires in a Nissan adapter harness).  This eliminates the need to run new wiring to the speakers.

Because of the low impedance of the Bose speakers, you can't bypass the Bose amps and keep the speakers.  You'll either have to keep the Bose amps in the system, and use a premium sound integration device, or bypass the Bose amps and use new speakers.

Hope this helps!

Brian