Ok... so I've got the Bazooka VSE Subwoofer for my tC. it includes it's own prewired harness that you run up the side of the car and the existing stereo connector hooks up through it to the stereo. Everything went ok with the installation, but I decided to add a simple switch (on the advice of others on this board) to turn the sub on and off.

There is a blue and white wire running through the sub harness marked "Amp turn on" (or something similar). Anyway, I had that one hooked up to a switch and nothing - the sub was on with the switch either way. The sub was on in fact even with the wire just cut and sitting disconnected. I couldn't figure this out forever. And then I had a revelation. There is another wire (also blue and white) marked "Ant turn on" (for antenna turn on, of course). this one has a connector in it already so it can splice right into it's wire. So today, after much tinkering, I tried that one, and what do you know? The sub turned off. I had to rewire the switch and solder the other wire back together but after i got that done, I've got a working sub and antenna - this also might be why my radio was a little more staticky than I expected, but I'm not sure about that yet.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you're ever doing anything destructive like cutting wires, you might even want to check the pinouts first - you shouldn't have to, but it burned me and wasted a whole lot of time.

 

you could of checked it with a test light first to see which wire lost power when the radio was turned off... good luck

 

That's interesting. I guess I got lucky and picked the right wire first when I wired my switch. I'm glad you got it all sorted out.

 

I think I might have been more careful since I'm somewhat new to this if I hadn't heard of someone else doing it first. It's just funny that a stock harness - not even a labeled aftermarket harness, but the stock one has wires that are incorrectly labelled. When i figured out what was going on I looked extra close at both the AMP and ANT wires to make sure there was no way that I was just misreading it. It's labelled wrong.

I wonder if this was just a one time deal or if lots of them are like this.