Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio Help; trouble with amp install

My bet is on the HU. Otherwise why would the hiss go away as soon as you turn it up?

Didn't get to mess with the radio today. I am starting to think it is the HU also. I will try hooking it up the way I had it hooked up previously and see if the noise goes away. I may pull up the center console and seperate the RCA and speakers from the Power cable as they are running side by side, but in seperate wire looms. If that doesn't help then it must be the radio. Problem is I purchased it on ebay online! UGH! saved about $30 bucks, no I wish I had just gone to best buy! Will post tomorrow afternoon and let you know what happened. Thanks for all the input though, I appreciate everyones help! Shame too, once it is off of 01 and swithing between settings and stations it sounds GREAT!

as one last test, unplug the RCA's from your HU and plug them into something else that has RCA outputs.. it could be anything, even a home stereo and just hook it up in the garage.. see if the problem is still there. If its gone than you know it has to be the source.

Carpe unfortunately don't have access to a garage right now. I did try something which leads me to believe that the problem is the way I routed the wires. I hooked up an old speaker directly to the HU outputs and turned ti to 00 no hum through that speaker, but hum through the other speakers, I pulled the RCA's off one by one and I get changes in the hum with all of them. since I originally had the front channels hooked up to the 2 channel amp with no problems and I am now getting hum through them with the 4 channel but there is no hum at 01 when music is playing with the 4 channel it must be my wiring. I am going to grap a ground loop isolator and see if that helps on any of the channels. I looked at one of the RCA it is twisted helical and it appears that each positive and negative cable is seperately encased and then the two seperate ones are encased in to make one cable. The other wire is the same one I used with the 2 channel with no problems, but looks like a regular wire. This leads me to beleive that the power cable my be the culprit. The 10G I used with the 2 channel had an outer criss cross metal jacket with the wire strands inside. The new power cables while larger are just plane red cables from wal-mart, I guess I got what I paid for?
Sorry for the long posts but I am now like a dog after a bone with this problem. on my way to circuit city for a ground loop isolator, not sure if I should get one for the power to the radio or two for the RCA leads to the amp?

PROBLEM SOLVED - I hooked up a ground loop isolator to the RCA Jacks and no more noise!; at least from the front channels, the Best Buy near me only had one left and I figure I will need to more for the other two channels. Thanks fellow CEG'rs for helping out!