Okay so i have been reading and researching for quite awhile and recently decided to take a shot at it. Currently it is a work in progress.. no literally i am still building it. So if you have specific questions or things you want pics of..let me know..if your shy to ask it..pm me. I've had a lot of ppl here help me so i don't mind helping out if i can. I am by no means a pro. This is my first install. So if you see something that's not right..please feel free to correct me.

Anyway.. this is my first build.. i did have two subs in the car.. but i didn't install them myself.. but this did help me because i had something to look at.

It is very time consuming and i run into problems all the time. Luckily this site and google help a lot.

Okay so the basics.

What am i doing?

I am swapping the front speakers and adding an amp for them.
Also, new sub which i hope to build a custom enclosure for.
And an ms8 .

I started with rewiring my current sub. Because i knew i was going to run two amps and the ms8 i decided to run 1/0 gauge wire.

This was actually a lot of work for me. I could not for the life of me find the grommet (pronounced grow-may not grahmet.. as i was told by lowe's employees during a supplies run). Lol this is what happens when all you do is read and not actually talk to ppl.

Here is a pic of where it is. Under your dash on the drivers side is the footwell light. Its in a black plastic. This attaches to your firewall (the wall that separates the inside and outside of the car). It gets attached to the firewall through a piece that is sticking out of the firewall.. DO NOT PULL THIS OUT. I mean you can. But this isn't what you need. Look below that.. i had to pull the carpet back a little and you will see the grommet. (black circular plug) U can pull it out with your fingers. It goes right back in. You will see it leads into a cubby and you will have to use some sort of wire hanger because between this and hole that comes out of the engine bay there is a 90 degree turn.

 

you can see the carpet around it,, that what i had to pull down

 

so this is 1/0 gauge.. it fit with out cutting anything..

if you read this thread which helped me a lot https://acurazine.com/forums/show...&highlight=ms8

you will see he mentions a "box" which is the cubby i was referring to. Having an extra hand will really help. It really is a pain running the wire and 1/0 gauge barely fit. I had my buddy push from the engine bay and i would have to pull in equal proportions to run it. Sometime it would get stuck and i would push it back in and well..you get the idea. Anyway.. here is a pic of it in the engine bay. You're going to want run the wire into the hole from the engine bay..then have someone put a hanger into the wire from inside and pull it into the car. Here is a pic of it inside the engine bay



the red wire is it.

also here is a pic of where you can expect to see it in the engine bay..where u see the white piece of paper..look directly down from there..it was very hard to get good pics in there..so i figured this would help someone trying to find the engine bay hole. All this pic is for is so when you go out to your car you can find the hole. You won't actually see the hole in this pic



i'm sure a lot of ppl are thinking this is too much detail for a power wire..but i had so much trouble finding this info and lately have been seeing other ppl post about it so thought i would share..

 

i bought a box of grommets from auto zone and used that to help plug the extra space in the hole for the power wire inside the car.. i had bought one from knuconcepts but it wasn't big enough and would fall into the hole.

I just pulled up the panels and ran the wire the down the driver side. Be careful when you are near the fusebox. Don't run the wire too close to the hood release. You don't want the wire damaged or for it to effect the hood release function. When i got to the back it got a little tricky. Took some time especially because the wire is so big it was tough to get it into the trunk. For the ground there is a plastic piece in the trunk which goes across the whole trunk.. right under it my previous installer had sanded it a little and made a grounding point. So i just used this.Obviously upgraded it to 1/0 gauge as well.

Remote- i ran a wire right off the fusebox- I believe its number 18. Its the headunit fuse. The only issue with this is.. you will probably get a popping noise with your sub. I will have to rewire this soon. My previous installer did this too and threw a 15 amp fuse in there.

The factory amp which is located behind the right trunk liner has a remote which you can use to avoid this issue.

 

okay.. now to the more fun stuff.. so depending on if you have the tech or not you have a different speaker setup. Techs have speakers in the rear doors while the nontechs don't. Don't let the door fool you. If you go listen in the nontech there are no speakers there lol.

Also, you have hear people complain about how it is tricky to do an install in our cars. Well this is what i was told and mainly its because of the factory amp.

Okay so we have three main speakers. Tweeters(little speakers in your sail panels(panel right next to your door mirror) mid's the speakers in your door and the sub. Tweeters play really high sounds, sub plays the deep bass and mids play the rest. So something needs to tell each speaker what to play. Usually the headunit does this. (its called processing sound) But in our car the factory amp does this. And since it is made to play with our stock speakers.. when you upgrade the speakers although there will be improvement you are not getting the most you can get out it. You can't just take out the factory amp because now there is nothing to tell the speakers what to play. So this is where an aftermarket processor comes in. I chose the ms8. After reading reviews it seemed to fit. I know some will disagree but i'm giving it a shot. Now, i currently do not have the knowledge to use this without the factory amp so the factory amp is still part of my system.

So what does the ms8 do? It takes all the sounds that come out of my amp..and "sums" them together as though they never got proccessed. Then it process's them. There are other processors out there.. but those require more knowledge.. this is more easier to work with and its really not that hard. You hook it up..then it makes you wear headphones and plays music through the speakers so it can tell when the sound of each speaker hits your ear and then adjusts the timing of each speaker so they all fit your ear at the correct time. Its a very cool product.

 

this will require cutting some wires..and boy was this scary as hell.. you will need a wire crimper and a wire stripper-- at first i didnt use a wire stripper and it took forever..here are a few pics of it during the process.. i must say.. it made my sub sound a lot better.. also inside the car it sounds much better.

also- this will not make you lose bluebooth or steering wheel functions or anything like that.. everything works just fine. My fm stations sound better too... i used to barely hear bass with fm stations.



so this is a pic of the amp.. the silver box is the amp.. very small.. the top wire is the input and bottom is the output to the speakers.. u can just stick your hand in there and unplug them both





i stripped the covering off the output wires..

the input wire has a white wire which is a remote-- if you read the thread i posted up above he goes into detail on how to use it.. as of yet i have not used it but probably will to avoid hearing the popping sound from my subs

 

here is a pic of the wires after they were cut.. i stripped the ends and began attaching new 14 gauge wire.. i would say you should use atleast 3 1/2 feet.

Also.. the els the one with the speakers in the doors does not have separate wires for the tweeters but the nontech does. The ms8 only needs inputs from the front and sub. If you have the nontech it will need the mids and tweeters as well as sub but if u have tech it will only need the fronts because one line goes to both the tweeters and mids and then the sub line.

So you take the output from the amp..cut the wires you need.. I cut the FL Fr both tweeters RL RR and sub. I gave myself about 3 inches from the plug as room for error.

Then i attached new speakers wire to FL FR both tweeters and sub of the end of the wires that were attached to the plug and going back in the factory amp. I put electric tape on the RR RL wires going into the plug since i don't need them.

Then.. the ends going back to the speakers all got new wires attached to it except for my sub because i was no longer using my stock sub.

here is a pic of the new speaker wires attached



Now the wires attached to the plug(harness) will go get attached again to the input harness of the ms8



then the new wires attached to the end that goes back to your speakers can go either into the output harness of your ms8 or to the output of an aftermarket amp if you choose to use one. At this time i haven't upgraded my stock speakers so i attached my wires to my ms8 output harness

 

before you start any of this..make sure you take the negative off your car..you can cause shorts.. i actually blew the headunit fuse .. after i hooked everything up..i got in the car and nothing turned on..i was pissed and it was cold and dark and i couldn't trouble shoot. I thought i screwed someone up badly and was scared as shit. I had to drive 2 hours to work the next day and had to print out directions off map quest because the plugs wouldn't work in the car. So i couldn't use gps or my phone because it would die. Also sucked driving with no music and no clock. Luckily it was just the fuse. I did have the negative off so not sure exactly how it happened.. i did up the fuse to 20 and its been fine.

If you get in and your radio doesn't turnon nor do you see the clock but see a/c display..its probably the fuse..you should pray its just a fuse lol.. asiancandy's post here really helped me.. i just got a fuse checker from autozone for like 8 bucks..it was really easy to check

https://acurazine.com/forums/2g-tsx-audio-bluetooth-electronics-navigation-304/fuse-non-tech-radio-875945/

Here is a link to the wire colors for when you make cuts-- be careful with the tweeters wires..especially front left..they are extremely thin.. make sure you get a good connection.. currently my left tweeter goes on and off..i have to fix it..

Look at the bottom of page 24. This is for both tech and non tech.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d42qaou8bv...ing%202012.pdf

 

in the pic posted above with all the new speaker wire.. you can see my red power wire..the yellow is my old 8 gauge power wire which i was taking out..it was run through the passenger side and was too small for my new setup.. so right under the power wire you see a bump or a raise in the trunk..well that is the plastic piece under which my ground is..

also..if you do the ms8..make sure to buy good wire connectors.. so what i mean.. sometimes ppl will take ground and strip off some insulation and screw it into the terminal.. but the ms8 the power and ground terminals are very close and if they touch it will spark.. so its important you put proper ends on them.. i also say this because no store i went to had termianls small enough for even 8 gauge..luckily i took the ends off my previous install .. so plan ahead and order these before you do your install

all in all i like the ms8.. i tried installing new speakers this past weekend but could not get the tweeter out of its housing or the speaker out of the door..then it started raining and i had to put it all back..i will try again soon hopefully

 

if you do try to install new speakers..look at this video


these are also helpful guides

http://workingmansproductions.com/sa...eplacement.pdf

https://acurazine.com/forums/2g-tsx-audio-bluetooth-electronics-navigation-304/2nd-gen-tsx-door-speaker-removal-install-instructions-772383/

i have another one but can't find it right now

another note on the ms8--sometimes when its cold as it is now..it won't start up..this usually happens if you have the display connected..unplug the display and it should start up..

 

like i said please feel free to comment ask questions and offer advice.. i will keep updating as i go on..also check out niebur's thread.. he has a lot of experience and will def add a lot of value to all of our builds with his knowledge.

https://acurazine.com/forums/2g-tsx-audio-bluetooth-electronics-navigation-304/niebur3s-2012-acura-tsx-se-%2Ademo-car-daily-driver%2A-sq-build-log-dynaudio-arc-900853/

 

Thanks for taking the time to show all this bro. I can finally run my 1/0 gauge!

 

nice write up man, were your input wires on the stock amp color cooridinated as the outputs were? mine sure as hell wasnt, if they werent color coded on the input how did you determine which wires paired?

 

Thanks fellas ..hope this helps some people.. Skathe if you are asking if the stock amp input wires had different colors.. Then yes.. It did.. If you look at post 6 picture 2 the top one is the input ... I didn't use any of the wires on there yet.. I will eventually take the remote out of there .. And if your don't have colors you can try to figure out the wires using the PIN number.. Try to match the PIN numbers on the output using the link I have above then use that to determine how to read the input pin

 

Justin,

I've read your post a few times and niebur's as well. I'm starting to understand how I'm going to run my sub and amp but I'm still confused about the details. I think I can figure out how to run the power and ground wire. I obviously know how to hook my aftermarket sub to my aftermarket amp. But I have some clarifying questions:

1. Which LOC will be inexpensive and work with my setup? Would this work:
My setup is below:
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-D9L7hkj...m1500&skipvs=T
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_136110W...S110-WXv2.html

2. In order to attach my factory amp to my aftermarket amp I will need to wire a LOC to the factory amp which is on the right side of my trunk per your pictures above? What wires will I be splicing into, just the factory sub wires or either the front left/right or rear left/right? Per your link the factory sub wire is the going to be the gray-lt wire?

3. From here, I would just need to wire the LOC to my amp's RCA jacks, wire my amp's remote wire to the white wire on the factory amp's input cluster of wires and wire my remote volume control knob to where I can reach it from the drivers seat?

I'm new to all of this so please bear with me...

 

I'm just realizing how my #2 question doesn't make sense... I'm confused. Can someone explain how and WHICH wires to connect the LOC to so I can hook up the RCA to my aftermarket amp?

 

Hey man.. I thought you had done this before? Anyway.. I didn't have any previous experience so I'll help you best I can.. First off.. Go read up on diyma.com.. Learn the basics .. Like you said there's 4 main things.. Power ground remote and signal (rca).

Now.. Which loc you use is upto you.. I didn't use one because I have the ms8.. If you don't feel like pulling apart the side of your car.. You can unplug the stock sub and use the wire going into that for signal

Also.. You can run a remote wire back from your fuse box.. Again.. Diyma will show you more on this.. Only issue with not using the factory remote is that you may get a pop noise from your sub when the amp turns on and off

Now back to signal.. Not everyone uses a loc.. Some ppl just cut the speaker wire then solder in or splice on some rca cables which can then go into your amp..

I originally had someone install my first sub and they did use a loc.. I forget which brand but it wasn't anything special.. Whether you use a loc or not you will need to splice that wire.. I just found these last night and think they may help you out.. You will still need to do some research to see what you are comfortable with doing.

http://www.posi-lock.com/posiplug.html

Like I said I am no expert.. Still learning.. If anything doesn't make sense or if anyone thinks I am giving out the wrong info please feel free to correct me

 

That will be much easier to do all my splicing and wiring using the stock sub wires. I was getting nervous having to splice into the output from the stock amp. I may still use the input's white wire for the remote.

Any idea which wires/colors I will need to splice into on the stock amp connector? Will a simple 2 channel LOC work such as this:

Or would something else be simpler/cheaper?

On my last car I just had to hook everything up via the head unit so there wasn't any splicing of existing wires. It was much easier than this seems to be.

Thank you guys.

 

I think the easiest thing for you to do, in your case, is to just tap into your stock sub wires.

You can use this so you dont have to splice anything... just plug this male connector to the female connector that usually connects to your stock sub and use the other end to connect your line out converter. White wire is normally postive, while black is negative.


Then just use RCA cables from the line out converter to your amp.. its pretty simple once you get going.

 

Wow that looks easy. Would this disable the use of my stock sub though? I would like to still use my stock sub and just add on my aftermarket sub with my aftermarket amp going to it.

 

Well if you use what Danny gave you.. You would no longer have a wire plugged into your sub.. So it wouldn't have any music coming to it..

And.. I thought about this too, but after you hook it all up.. You realise it's better to unhook the stock.. It will sound weird .. Well at least that was my opinion... Plus.. It's so much easier to use what Danny gave you and just unhook your stock sub..

Have you started yet?

 

I have not started yet. I ended up calling cruthfield yesterday and asked their opinion on installing. They suggested I take the signal from the left and right rear deck speakers. Connect my LOC to those, run it into my amp from there and be done with it.

They suggested this in order to give the amp a better bass signal from the rear deck speakers:
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_161LC2I...i.html?tp=1276
Any thoughts on this?

I'm understanding more of how to wire the audio now, thank you all for your help!

 

My 8 gauge amp wiring kit will be at my house on Monday along with the cheap LOC I bought (holding off on the AudioControl LC2i that Crutchfield suggested).

I will most likely start next weekend and try to get it done in a day. Any tips on taking up the trim and not breaking/scratching it?

Thank you!

 

I know someone else used the lc2.. Or maybe the 6.. I got the ms8 instead after doing some research.. It just had better capabilities .. But it's all about your budget and tastes..ms8 is not cheap.. Anyway.. I never used those units so idk.. I would get a simple loc and then see how you feel ..

Do you plan on doing upgrades later? Like another amp and interior speakers.. If so.. Reconsider the 8.. I had 8 for my first sub and after I rewired it to 4 there was a huge difference.. So make sure 8 is all you need

You can start with the piece you see when you open the driver side door.. You can use tools or just stick your fingers in and lift.. I've been working on my setup for quite awhile now.. Still in the works..take your time and have fun

 

The MS8 is far too expensive for my tastes right now. I'm going to see how a cheap LOC works out and if the sound quality is unbearable I will upgrade to the LC2i.

I don't plan on upgrading my speakers. In my opinion the tweeters and mids sound great, it's just the bass that's lacking my desired boom. I'm a big fan of bass heavy music. Mostly underground/less popular dubstep.

 

I received my amp kit this weekend however I'm still waiting on the wire connectors that Danny suggested

Justin, your guide helped SO much. Finding the firewall hole was a breeze. I ran 8 gauge wire so it was very simple to pull it through with a coat hanger. I was careful in removing all panels and it couldn't have been more simple to run it into the trunk.

I've stripped the black wire bundles on the rear deck, sanded down a spot in the trunk for my ground and prepared the white wire on the stock amp input molex for my remote wire. All I need are the connectors to arrive tomorrow and I can hook my LOC to the rear deck speakers!

Thank you all for all your help, seriously it all helped so much!