Here is the solution for the problem with the Subwoofer.

What you do is take the subwoofer out of the car and loosen the 6 screws. inside you will see the 5" subwoofer (what a joke) and the matchbook size 100W amplifier (100W ! not!!)

Swap the Yellow and Purple wires. However you want to do this is up to you, butt splices etc. I just removed the two wires from the connector to the amp & switched them. Nice and clean.

Now this makes a HUGE difference in the bass output (probably 10x more bass).

Whats going on is acura must have screwed up the wiring harness and the low level input to the amp is out of phase. So you could switch the input wires instead but just switching those two at the plug is easier. I suspect the TSB or recall on this will just be a plug that switches it before it enters the Sub box.

Anyway this should keep me satisfied until I get my new 10" sub box built.!:thumbsup:

How did you figure that out?

 

Re: Re: RSX Type-S Bose = No Bass, SOLUTION!!

How did you figure that out?

Yeah, good question.

kennedyd, did you take any pictures? I wonder if doing what you propose will shorten the life of the speaker? Can you undo what you did and go back to the orginial factory configuration? What I mean is, if I switch the wires because I cut them or something will I ever get it back to the original or will it look tampered with.

 

Hold on. Honda will have the tech swap the position of the wires in the connector to fix this problem. According to the December service news this only affected a few cars thru vin range 2C016209 (last six numbers). If a customer complains about low bass the dealer will check the possition of the green/white wire and the light green wire. Let the dealer mess with it.

Cant wait to figure out which wires you moved.

 

Hold on. Honda will have the tech swap the position of the wires in the connector to fix this problem. According to the December service news this only affected a few cars thru vin range 2C016209 (last six numbers). If a customer complains about low bass the dealer will check the possition of the green/white wire and the light green wire. Let the dealer mess with it.

Cant wait to figure out which wires you moved.

 

Ok, I swapped my Yellow and Purple wires on the "bose sub amp connector" I "think" my bass is louder but im not sure, if it is louder its barely noticible.

You can swap all the wires without cutting, they pop out of the connector when you push on their side with someone pointy.

 

Hold on. Honda will have the tech swap the position of the wires in the connector to fix this problem. According to the December service news this only affected a few cars thru vin range 2C016209 (last six numbers). If a customer complains about low bass the dealer will check the possition of the green/white wire and the light green wire. Let the dealer mess with it.

Cant wait to figure out which wires you moved.

"green/white wire and the light green wire" Where did you get those colors from? I did the "Yellow and Purple" like 'kenedyd' did. Do you have a copy or know exactly what the dealerships where told to change? my car like #630 so this affects me.

 

Ok, no problem. The factory wants the techs to use a special tool, narrow probe, to push the green/white and light green wires out of the connector that plugs into the bose enclosure.

These are the + and - wires from the front amp(under the pass. seat).

You guys are going inside the amp box. And yes they match up to the purple and yellow wires of the rear amp.

If going in the box for DIY is easy, fine.

This hasnt made it to a bullitin yet, and no mention if any damage is done.

Kennedyd, could the 100w be achieved by combining the output of the front and rear amps, maybe this figure is correct.

 

So to be clear, you are saying that if I do a swap at the sub itself in the well, I need to swap the green/white and light green. If I do it at the amp, I need to do the purple and the yellow.

Also, I know you said there is no bulletin yet, but is there anything official from Acura on what needs to be done? If it is just the simple swap, I'll handle that myself and not worry about going to the dealer.

I just want to be certain that this is the correct way to deal with the problem and that making this swap will not cause any problems such as shorts or other damage to the audio system.

 

So to be clear, you are saying that if I do a swap at the sub itself in the well, I need to swap the green/white and light green. If I do it at the amp, I need to do the purple and the yellow.

I don't care what anyone else says, that did the trick. Thank you for the DIY.

 

All these images where taken after the swap, I choose to swap the wires on the amp harrness (yellow and purple). I wasnt able to easily remove the wires from the external harness. The wires on the amp harness are easy to remove and swap cleanly.

 

.

 

So to be clear, you are saying that if I do a swap at the sub itself in the well, I need to swap the green/white and light green. If I do it at the amp, I need to do the purple and the yellow.

Also, I know you said there is no bulletin yet, but is there anything official from Acura on what needs to be done? If it is just the simple swap, I'll handle that myself and not worry about going to the dealer.

I just want to be certain that this is the correct way to deal with the problem and that making this swap will not cause any problems such as shorts or other damage to the audio system.

I work a dealership, so I always encourage people to bring any warranty concern to us. Yeah we get paid to address the problems, but we also want people to be happy with their cars. So it doesnt have to be official, but you can refer your service advisor to the 2001 December service news. They should have a copy so you can look at it together.

Nice job muxx. Looks like the way to go for DIY.

 

Thanks. Will do.

 

sheesh!

how come none of the audio pros figured out there may be a phase problem?

to tell you the truth, my sub at home has a polarity switch, but it never really made a diff gonna go try it now.

 

There is a Service Bulletin on the Bose Sub this month. Check it out on this thread!

http://forums.clubrsx.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=106427#post106427

 

Well the way I figured this out was through 1. intuition and 2. reading between the lines.

I have a 1997 Supra Turbo and it has a factory sub, so when I bought this car and I couldn't hear any bass, even though I had the bass at +5 and had stuck my head down in the trunk to hear it, I figured I just got ripped off. I also figured I'd complain when I got the first oil change. (i've only got 1300 miles) When I saw the post saying Acura was about to acknowledge a problem with it and bose's response I took matters into my own hands.

In the closed post, Bose said this was a wiring problem. And if you set up a speaker out of phase it has less bass response. I judged Iasca finals back in 1998, and one of the test tracks is for phasing. So I put 2 + 2 and swapped the low level inputs. I figured it could also be out of phase at the speaker but it didnt seem likely. Especially because instead of using larger gauge wire they used TWO strands to the woofer. Usually the low level inputs on an amp are RCA jacks so it was an easy mistake.

Also green/white and light green are the colors on the OUTSIDE of the box, inside they are purple and yellow. And how nice, bose even twisted the wires together for noise cancellation. How that would even matter in a 3" run of wire I have no idea...

Anyway I doubt anyone will ever need to look in there again. And I'm certainly not worried about it being covered under warranty. And yes even though its a 10x increase in bass its still garbage in my opinion so I'm putting in a set of MB Quart Premium 10"s and the 6.5 q' series components.

But there is absolutely no way that amp puts out 100W RMS. (I got that off the sticker on that amp) It is smaller than a jewelry box and there is 0 heat sink on it. I mean, even a punch 40 (which is 20 x 2) is amost the size of the whole enclosure. The way they probably rated this amp was with a 1k sine wave and cranked it until clipping. Plus the 5" speaker, come on, who considers a 5" a subwoofer? not to mention the speaker isn't very efficient obviously. Bose is crap anyway. I cant believe they charge so much for that garbage stereo. To think thats one of the reasons they give to buy the type-s!

In response to one of the posts above, no this will effect the speaker long term, only make it more efficient. The factory screwed up + and - ! Sure you could undo it, but why??? To be honest with you the less I have to see the dealer, the better, and this is probably going to be the dealer "repair" also.

But hey if you aren't comfortable doing this, then dont do it. I'm certainly not going to be held accountable if you somehow short out something or electrocute yourself accidentally or get hit by lightning while working on your car :dontknow:

 

Are those wires going into the Sub, Speaker Level or Low Level input like RCA?

 

The ones going into the subwoofer are low level like RCA. & there is a 12v+ switched and a ground to power the amp (the thicker wires). But I dont know if the low level RCA's are crossed over or not (could be built into the amp), i didnt bother hooking up another amp or the RTA to it. I wouldnt recommend using those to drive an aftermarket amp, the same way I wouldnt recommend using high level speaker outputs to drive an aftermarket amp.

If you want to buy an amp, buy a good head unit too. Not to say I dont like the 6 disc in dash changer, thats why I didnt just rip this thing out day 1.

What I dont know about the stereo right now is if the xover is in the amp or in the head unit or what, at this point I really dont care, I'm just going to take it all out pretty soon.

 

The ones going into the subwoofer are low level like RCA. & there is a 12v+ switched and a ground to power the amp (the thicker wires). But I dont know if the low level RCA's are crossed over or not (could be built into the amp), i didnt bother hooking up another amp or the RTA to it. I wouldnt recommend using those to drive an aftermarket amp, the same way I wouldnt recommend using high level speaker outputs to drive an aftermarket amp.

If you want to buy an amp, buy a good head unit too. Not to say I dont like the 6 disc in dash changer, thats why I didnt just rip this thing out day 1.

What I dont know about the stereo right now is if the xover is in the amp or in the head unit or what, at this point I really dont care, I'm just going to take it all out pretty soon.

The only reason I was asking was because I have a 8" self amplified bazooka tube that someone gave me a couple years ago. I should try it out, it can't sound worst then the bose sub. If you get a chance could you hookup the RTA to it.

 

ok how the hell do these yellow and purple wires come out? I have tried pulling them out with plires pulling and pulling they wont come out, I'm about to cut them.

 

The self powered bazooka will have a built in xover anyway, just plug it in. The worst you're going to get is high frequency out of the sub. I'm not gonna touch that thing again anyway!

 

to get the wires to come out you need a small flat screwdriver and you need to poke the tab in from the bottom of the connector.

you'll see it on the bottom of the connector where you need to push it in, then give it a nice tug.

to install it you bend the tab slightly back up, then push it back in the hole. -click-

 

ok how the hell do these yellow and purple wires come out? I have tried pulling them out with plires pulling and pulling they wont come out, I'm about to cut them.

Don't cut anything, they pull right out, you just need to push the clip with something pointy, each pin has a clip if you look at the harness from the side.

 

Just got done swapping the wires and there is a good increase in the bass.

 

I work a dealership, so I always encourage people to bring any warranty concern to us. Yeah we get paid to address the problems, but we also want people to be happy with their cars. So it doesnt have to be official, but you can refer your service advisor to the 2001 December service news. They should have a copy so you can look at it together.

Nice job muxx. Looks like the way to go for DIY.

Which Seattle dealership do you work at?

 

yay.. finally someone figured it out. so it must sound pretty good then eh. well maybe i should cancel my appt and dyi it? or should i keep it and have the dealer do the work?

 

umm.. heres a stupid question.. how the hell do u get the bose speaker out of the spare tire??? ive pulled and pushed and it seems as if im missing something. i looked at the manual and i dont think i saw anything on removing the woofer. well if i cant figure it out now ill just wait for the dealer.