Hello guys, hoping someone can lay some insights my way because it isn't making sense to me.

I've had the 9886 installed for over a year but never got around to troubleshooting. On my previous car, a volvo 850, I too replaced the stock HU with an Eclipse CD5000 with the same effect.

In both cases, the cars had factory amps and the proper harness was used to convert Headunit RCA out -> harness -> factory amp wires. Both cases the bass became tiny after even with the bass on the aftermarket HU maxed out. With the stock factory system, both cars had adequate bass for my liking. It's like the depth of the bass is lost more so than how loud it is..

Thanks!

 

The factory headunit has a lot of processing built in.

Buy new speakers, rewire it all.

 

Would a preamp/equalizer work then since that should cover "lot of processing"? Sigh... I hate getting aftermarket HU other than their function to play mp3 cds and USB.

 

OEM head has no processing, all of the EQ is in the bose amp itself. What kind of vehicle is this to begin with? Are you sure you don't have the highpass filter turned on in the deck?

I do alot of bose equipped chevy trucks and they sound the same as before.

 

Most likely the harness is to blame here. Factory amps use BTL signals not the unbalanced RCA type. I had the same problem in my old Maxima with a Bose setup and I decided to rip the amps out and replace the speakers with better aftermarket ones.

Keeping some components of the factory system would have required some reverse engineering which I didn't feel like doing. I never found a true off-the-shelf solution.

 

Haha thats very encouraging. Damn it! I've already won a 250/1 on ebay and looking for a powerwedge 8w3v3 just to bring back the bass...