Installing Subwoofer and additional amp.

Shadrack · Mar 17, 2021

Hi,
I am looking for a little help on cabling between rear of Radio and under drivers seat.
Some years back I upgraded my front speakers, see original post;

T6 Ocean, speaker upgrade.

Hi all. I am swapping out the front speakers and tweeters that came with the new Cali. With the help of the various forums I have discovered how to remove door cards and I am in the process of deadening the doors before installing Pioneer ts-H1703 drivers. I have become a little stuck on how I...

vwcaliforniaclub.com

To this now I am trying to add a Blaupunkt active sub to live under the drivers seat. by adding a sub which does include low pass cutoff, gain etc I will want to add a hi pass filter to stop low frequency clouding the door speakers.

I have decided to put an extra amp under seat that includes hi pass filter and would also improves the output from the radio to the midrange door speaker.

Amp is;

BBX-T600 2 channel power amplifier 300 watts max power

www.caraudiocentre.co.uk

I need some advice on best way/route to get front speaker wires from rear of radio area to under drivers seat where I will probably fit a hi to rca converter for amp input. The amp I see has RCA out so I will use this to drive sub.

I am also not to sure on best way to power both these devices. As they are both auto sensing I am thinking I can nip across to passenger seat and piggy back a fuse from the leisure battery.

I have discovered rear speaker connection(thanks to members on this forum) which could do sub but with amp needing front speaker wires I am going to forget about using the rear. I don’t use anyway as when parked up I use mobi and a decent bt speaker.

Any advice, help would really be appreciated, thank you.

Sorry, as a final after thought, Sorry. But apart from main door speaker I see that there is provision to fit a further smaller speaker in the door. If anyone has experience of doing this I may want to try this for myself.

Thank you once again.

_Tom_ · Mar 10, 2024

Hey! I’m attempting this today. Where did you run the wires? Thanks!

California_Clarky · Mar 28, 2024

I am just looking to put a small sub in my Cali just to add a bit of body to the sound - dont want a boom box - but not sure where I can connect it without going into the dash which I dont want to do and advice would be appreciated

mwpmorris · Mar 28, 2024

I can offer some thoughts on my experience of fitting an underseat sub to my T6 beach. I have an old Pioneer one which I used to have in my Golf. It is an active sub, with integrated controllable low-pass filter and volume controls. I spliced into my rear speaker outputs located underneath the driver's seat using Scotch locks and fed them into the sub. It's not ideal as when I balance the speakers to the front only, I lose the sub signal and in hindsight I should have used the front speaker feeds instead. No need for a high-low converter as the amp accepts speaker-level signals ok. The sub is powered directly from the leisure battery, for which I had to fish a cable between the two front seats underneath the carpet. I found a switched live behind the dash somewhere and simply fed a single cable tidily underneath the floor mats so you can't see it. There is also a grounding post underneath the driver's seat if you need it.

California_Clarky · Mar 28, 2024

mwpmorris said:
I can offer some thoughts on my experience of fitting an underseat sub to my T6 beach. I have an old Pioneer one which I used to have in my Golf. It is an active sub, with integrated controllable low-pass filter and volume controls. I spliced into my rear speaker outputs located underneath the driver's seat using Scotch locks and fed them into the sub. It's not ideal as when I balance the speakers to the front only, I lose the sub signal and in hindsight I should have used the front speaker feeds instead. No need for a high-low converter as the amp accepts speaker-level signals ok. The sub is powered directly from the leisure battery, for which I had to fish a cable between the two front seats underneath the carpet. I found a switched live behind the dash somewhere and simply fed a single cable tidily underneath the floor mats so you can't see it. There is also a grounding post underneath the driver's seat if you need it.

thanks for the quick response - dont suppose you have any pictures? are the the front speaker cables located under the drivers seat or anywhere apart from in the dash? did you feel the addition was worth the effort

mwpmorris · Mar 28, 2024

California_Clarky said:
thanks for the quick response - dont suppose you have any pictures? are the the front speaker cables located under the drivers seat or anywhere apart from in the dash? did you feel the addition was worth the effort

The sub was def worth the effort, but I work in sound so maybe not so important to most people. You can notice the sub kick while stationary but while driving it's more "complimentary" to the overall sound.

I'm fairly sure you can get an adapter block to splice off the front speaker connectors to two additional outputs. I've had the screen replaced on my head unit and saw the guy take the unit out - looks like a surprisingly easy job (compared to doing it on my old Golf anyway).

I'll see if I can get a pic over the next few days.

California_Clarky · Mar 28, 2024

I have the pro screen not sure I can even see where the join is

Shadrack · Apr 2, 2024

California_Clarky said:
I am just looking to put a small sub in my Cali just to add a bit of body to the sound - dont want a boom box - but not sure where I can connect it without going into the dash which I dont want to do and advice would be appreciated

Hi Tom,
Sorry for late reply, a lot depends on what your sub and amp requires for inputs.
in my case because it was (*) an active sub it required preamp inputs which could only be taken from the amp. The amp needed the existing speaker outputs from the head unit.

So I installed at the time a splitter between the head unit and the loom block.
(I was not wanting to chop or mess with the existing VW loom). From this I spliced in all the required cables needed to feed the amp which was to live along with the sub under the drivers seat.
The cable route was pretty simple, I took the two channels of the front speakers from the block, plus a live and switched live to the underside of the drivers seat.
The route was via the rear of the dials, I removed the door seal rubber and the step to expose the edge of the carpet and fed the loom just behind the carpet. There is plenty of space in the carpet foam backing to push the cables into.
Once I reached the B pillar slackening off the right hand seat base fixing’s allowed me to push cables under the seat emerging up through a pre cut opening in the carpet.

Since that installation I had upgraded to a Kenwood which removed the requirement of the amp. So for this I removed the extra connector block I had installed and exchanged it for a Kenwood connector block.
The preamp cables for the sub this time were taken from pre-outs at the rear of the Kenny and followed the same route to the seat base.(*)

Fitting a sub, amp, and better speakers really did improve the stock head unit. In fitting the Kenwood at a later date gave me more control to the sound stage with also some better features such as wireless CarPlay etc.

As regards the space for another speaker in the door card, this would have been for a midrange unit, I did think about this but that’s as far as that went.
My later upgrade, was to upgrade to 8” alpine speakers and tweeters from my previous Pioneer 6” units. This made a huge difference to the sound quality.

To benefit from your upgrades it really is important to get the sound deadening on the same surfaces of the speaker mounting also behind on the door skin. This is probably the first most effective upgrade you can do.

I hope the above is of some help Tom. If I have not been too clear on my explanation, please ask away.
Good luck.

(*) Since installing my lithium battery under the drivers seat I no longer have a sub. It is missed as it does just add that subtle extra dimension to the sound. One day I will discover a new home for it within my Cali.

California_Clarky · Apr 2, 2024

Shadrack said:
Hi Tom,
Sorry for late reply, a lot depends on what your sub and amp requires for inputs.
in my case because it was (*) an active sub it required preamp inputs which could only be taken from the amp. The amp needed the existing speaker outputs from the head unit.

So I installed at the time a splitter between the head unit and the loom block.
(I was not wanting to chop or mess with the existing VW loom). From this I spliced in all the required cables needed to feed the amp which was to live along with the sub under the drivers seat.
The cable route was pretty simple, I took the two channels of the front speakers from the block, plus a live and switched live to the underside of the drivers seat.
The route was via the rear of the dials, I removed the door seal rubber and the step to expose the edge of the carpet and fed the loom just behind the carpet. There is plenty of space in the carpet foam backing to push the cables into.
Once I reached the B pillar slackening off the right hand seat base fixing’s allowed me to push cables under the seat emerging up through a pre cut opening in the carpet.

Since that installation I had upgraded to a Kenwood which removed the requirement of the amp. So for this I removed the extra connector block I had installed and exchanged it for a Kenwood connector block.
The preamp cables for the sub this time were taken from pre-outs at the rear of the Kenny and followed the same route to the seat base.(*)

Fitting a sub, amp, and better speakers really did improve the stock head unit. In fitting the Kenwood at a later date gave me more control to the sound stage with also some better features such as wireless CarPlay etc.

As regards the space for another speaker in the door card, this would have been for a midrange unit, I did think about this but that’s as far as that went.
My later upgrade, was to upgrade to 8” alpine speakers and tweeters from my previous Pioneer 6” units. This made a huge difference to the sound quality.

To benefit from your upgrades it really is important to get the sound deadening on the same surfaces of the speaker mounting also behind on the door skin. This is probably the first most effective upgrade you can do.

I hope the above is of some help Tom. If I have not been too clear on my explanation, please ask away.
Good luck.

(*) Since installing my lithium battery under the drivers seat I no longer have a sub. It is missed as it does just add that subtle extra dimension to the sound. One day I will discover a new home for it within my Cali.

where abouts is the splitter block fitted I can't see how the infotainment comes out its the pro version that has not seams

Shadrack · Apr 2, 2024

Hi,
I see you have a 6.1, this is a different beast possibly from my T6. when it comes to infotainment. The splitter block or connector will be connected directly to the rear of head unit. The splitter or a specific interface will be connected between the block and head unit.
To remove the head unit on a T6, once the centre front vent and head unit escutcheon is removed, you see the four torx screws holding the head unit in place. If there is a difference, I’m afraid I don’t know how the head unit is installed in the T6.1