Car Stereos: stock cd/add amp, gm vehicle, rca cable

Question
Ok I have a stock cd player and set of subs with an amp on the way. My question is will I need more than a wiring kit to wire it to my stock cd and would it be smarter just to but a new cd?

Answer
Hi Chad,

Whether or not you'll need more hardware and whether or not an aftermarket CD player would be better depends on your car and the quality of the factory system.

There're various things that come into play including whether or not the factory system has a factory amp.  If so, you'll need to buy a factory amp bypass kit.  If it does not, the other issue is does the factory deck have preouts?  Some do, but it's pretty rare.

If you don't have a factory amp, and don't have preouts in the factory deck, then you'll need your amp to have speaker level inputs and some extra speaker wire to run from the back of the factory deck into the amp.  You'll need to figure out which wires go to the speakers in the car, and tap into them, and run them to the trunk to be plugged into the amp's speaker level input.  The problem with this approach is that they're more susceptible to noise and EMI because they're pre-amplified, and the wires are generally not as well shielded as an RCA cable.

All in all, unless you have a higher end factory system and/or a newer (~2000+) GM vehicle, you'd be best off to replace the deck too; it's usually the cheapest way to make your system significantly better.

Justin