So in an NA, there are 4 wires per seat for headrest speaker hookup:

Black -
White +
Yellow -
Red +

(polarity is what I figured based on the connectors at the headrest speakers and could be wrong)

When I ran wiring for my 6x9s yesterday, I ran wires from the pigtail under the driver's seat only. Black/White to the passenger side and Yellow/Red to the driver's.

Have I done this properly? They are barely audible.

How are the headrests set up? Is it one left and one right speaker per rest or two lefts in the driver's seat and two rights in the passenger? Really , the answer to that should show the way forward but I'm sure someone here knows EXACTLY what to do.

 

using stock HU?

the factory wiring should be:

Left
Red/Yellow
Red/Blue

Right
Blue/White
Blue/Orange


the passenger side speakers are in parallel

 

Nope, Alpine HU. Trying to figure out the rear speakers before I attempt to tune the IMPRINT stuff.

The Red/Yellow/Black/White that I referred to are the colors from the seat pigtail.

 

beats me.

 

It has been a looong time since I've been to the audio section of m.net, but it's a known issue that the headrest speakers were factory wired out-of-phase on many/most Miatas. I don't remember the wire colors, but I used a multimeter to determine which pins on the connector behind the HU went to which headrest wires. When you do this you will see how fucked up the factory headrest wiring is.

 

Greeeeaaaattt.

 

 

lol wut

 

thats so rad. i knew there was a dark science to being an EE.

 

I'd been taught it as "Bad Boys Rape..."

Probably several different versions floating around.


Ok, some basics:

Black, White, Red and Yellow are not the colors of a factory headrest harness, so we'll just toss the factory wiring diagram out the window and forget about it. I'm going to assume that the pinout you derived for them is correct.

One left and one right in each headrest, with the two sets wired in parallel.

Alpine appears to use the following color-code for the wiring on their pigtail:

Rear Left + = Green
Rear Left - = Grn / Blk
Rear Right + = Violet
Rear Right - = Violet / Blk

If I interpret your earlier post correctly, then for a single headrest, the left speaker is wired to Red (+) and Yellow (-), and the right speaker is wired to White (+) and Black (-)

If that is correct, then connect the speakers in the driver's seat as follows:

Green to Red
Grn / Blk to Yellow
Violet to White
Violet / Blk to Black


For the passenger's seat, do the same. So you will wind up with two headrest wires connected to each head-unit wire.




Yeah, they're a lot quieter than the mains. This is what the front/rear fader control is for. Mine usually winds up biased to the rear quite heavily, like 6/10 or so.

 

Thanks for the very helpful post Joe, but I'm not using headrest speakers any longer (no provision for them in Sprint Vs) and am trying to wire in some 6x9s instead.

It seems what I need to do if there is a left and right in each rest is to either double up some of the wires coming from the pigtails intended for the seats' speakers, or to trace the wires back to the headunit and run them anew (ugh).

 

(Posting from my phone.)

There is a left and right in each. The factory wiring is 4 wires. Two for each channel . The passenger side is just spliced into that.

 

Cool, thanks!

 

Not running new wiring? Stock **** is pathetic. Run new wires, problem solved?

 

Me too! That and Bad Booz Rots Out Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well.

I found it easier to just mesmerize the colors instead of the little sayings.

Especially since none of the sayings have Gold Silver None at the end.

 

Haha.

I still find myself reciting the old saying for the resistor codes, though for some reason, I never needed a mnemonic to learn the Belden non-paired cable color scheme. Black white red green brown blue orange yellow violet grey pink tan.

Though oddly, I still can never remember the base color sequence for 25 pair CAT5. Not sure why that one won't stick.



Anyway, back on topic:


Koto, forget the factory wiring, there's too much confusion here. Just pull some new wire from the HU itself directly to the new speakers, following this convention:

Rear Left + = Green
Rear Left - = Grn / Blk
Rear Right + = Violet
Rear Right - = Violet / Blk

 

That works well, thanks Joe!

Relatively painless too, since I don't put all of the little screws or trim pieces back, so the console, carpet, etc. is pretty easy to work with. lol

 

yeah, thanks

 

Got this working correctly now, Scott was right - my speakers were wired out-of-phase as standard... bastards. Who does that? Mazda, apparently.