w126 stereo fader - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

rickg · #1 07-14-2003, 05:41 PM

Finally re-wired my CD deck WITHOUT using that POS factory fader on the shifter console. What a difference it made! Sounds like I just added another 50watts to the system!Which is probably exactly what happened now that I'm using all four channels of the deck instead of just feeding the front channels thru the fader. Just a heads up to anyone out there that's still using that thing with an aftermarket stereo deck of anykind.

edge · #2 07-15-2003, 12:06 PM

rickg, can you guide me through the process. Did you rewire to the rear speakers or did you simply splice wire from the head unit to the rear wires after detaching them from the fader switch? How do you identify which wires go to the rear speakers on the fader switch? Thanks.

adiaw83 · #3 07-15-2003, 10:07 PM

Im curious too. please let me know rick.

rickg · #4 07-15-2003, 11:56 PM

Heck, wish I'd written down a few notes. I can't remember exactly which wires I used now. But it's not too hard to figure once you get in there.
First, pull out you deck, the ashtray assembly, and that little pocket thingy that you put your sunglasses in just under and in front of the ashtray. It'll just lift out once you get the ashtray assembly out. Then the panel with the fader and window switches slides forward and comes loose.
Pull up the panel that has the fader and window switches on it. I could just barely pull it up enough to get at the bottom of the switches. But once you do, you'll see that there are 6 wires attached to the fader control, in 2 rows of three. The center wire on each side is the signal in wires. Those are the ones coming from the deck. According to my wiring diagram, the left speaker is black w/red stripe, the right is black w/green stripe. see if that matches up when you get in there. If so, we're in buisness. There's another wire of each of those color combos on one end of the fader connections. Those go to the front speakers. I'll get to those later. For now, I left those connected, and cut off the center two that I just talked about, and the the other two, a solid red wire, and a solid black. Those go to the rear speakers. I then spliced the red to the black/red, and the black to the black/green. You're now permantly connected to the rear speakers. Depending on which channels you used on your deck, front or rear, that's what now goes to the rear.
This is getting long

Sorry!

I had a problem when I then tried to connect new wires from the deck to the wires still connected to the fader, which are the front speakers. I cut them off, and spliced accordingly. I got wierd results. I think it's because of the negative side wiring. The car uses a common wire, and the deck wants seperate wires. Anyway, what I ended up doing, and this was the hardest part, was tear into the dash and run new wires from the front speakers to the deck, and connect that way. The left front was the hardest. I pulled off the air ducting panel that runs under the steering column(I've had that off before, so knew how to go at it). Then I pulled off the cover of the left front speaker and pulled the speaker out. If you lay a bright work light on the floor board near the brake pedal, and peer down thru the speaker opening thru the windshield, you can see a bit of a passage down thru the tangle. That's what I shot for. Feed a length of new speaker wire down thru that mess. Takes a bit of patience(ok, alot of patience!) Then you need to feed it over to the center console. From there i used a piece of stiff wire, like a coat hanger straightened out, taped the speaker wire to one end, and fed it thru the side of the center console to the area behind the deck cavity.
For the right front speaker, pull out the glove box and you can see the wires coming down from the speaker. I just cut it at a good, easy to get to place, and spliced a new wire on there. Then use that piece of coat hanger, tape the speaker wire to it again, and feed the coat hanger thru that side panel of the center console.
There you go. make sure to get the polarities right, or the bass will suck big time.
Piece of cake, huh!

Took me a couple hours to do all this, but boy was it worth it! I connected all the wires and turned it on before I put it all back together to make sure everything worked right, and couldn't believe the diff!
Good luck! Let me know if ya get it

edge · #5 07-19-2003, 04:30 PM

Thanks for the inspiration, rickg. I just wired around the fader in my 300D (which CCity didn't do 2 years ago when I had them install my Sony CD player). What a PITA that job was. First the colors for the 6 wires at the fader on the 300D are annoying indistinguishable. So after wiring them together and finding out they didn't work, I used trial by error. Also, those are 4 positive wires coming out of the fader. I tried to ground the fronts with the ground at the HU but that didn't work so I re-wired the front speaker directly to the head unit. All in all, it sounds much better, that fader is crap!

rickg · #6 07-20-2003, 03:20 AM

Hey, great Edge

Glad ya got it worked out. Yeah, my fader even started to kind of melt down from the higher out put of my deck. It's only something like 25w/channel, but that fader didn't like it. After about 10 minutes of high-volume listening, it got pretty hot.
Sounds like you discovered the same thing as I did with the ground-side of the front speaker wires. When I tried hooking mine up, it made the L/R balance control do wierd stuff. I'd get either just the right rear speaker, or both rears and just the front left when adjusting back and forth. I was going to mess with it more, but decided at that point it wouldn't take that much more to just run new wires altogether.

Jimmy Joe · #7 02-06-2005, 05:25 PM

I agree, once you have gotten that far into it, you might as well pull the back seat and run new, heavy wires all the way.
Then you can run a stereo as powerful as you wish.

yshahar · #8 05-25-2005, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickg

Heck, wish I'd written down a few notes. I can't remember exactly which wires I used now. But it's not too hard to figure once you get in there.
First, pull out you deck, the ashtray assembly, and that little pocket thingy that you put your sunglasses in just under and in front of the ashtray. It'll just lift out once you get the ashtray assembly out. Then the panel with the fader and window switches slides forward and comes loose.
Pull up the panel that has the fader and window switches on it. I could just barely pull it up enough to get at the bottom of the switches. But once you do, you'll see that there are 6 wires attached to the fader control, in 2 rows of three. The center wire on each side is the signal in wires. Those are the ones coming from the deck. According to my wiring diagram, the left speaker is black w/red stripe, the right is black w/green stripe. see if that matches up when you get in there. If so, we're in buisness. There's another wire of each of those color combos on one end of the fader connections. Those go to the front speakers. I'll get to those later. For now, I left those connected, and cut off the center two that I just talked about, and the the other two, a solid red wire, and a solid black. Those go to the rear speakers. I then spliced the red to the black/red, and the black to the black/green. You're now permantly connected to the rear speakers. Depending on which channels you used on your deck, front or rear, that's what now goes to the rear.
This is getting long

Sorry!

I had a problem when I then tried to connect new wires from the deck to the wires still connected to the fader, which are the front speakers. I cut them off, and spliced accordingly. I got wierd results. I think it's because of the negative side wiring. The car uses a common wire, and the deck wants seperate wires. Anyway, what I ended up doing, and this was the hardest part, was tear into the dash and run new wires from the front speakers to the deck, and connect that way. The left front was the hardest. I pulled off the air ducting panel that runs under the steering column(I've had that off before, so knew how to go at it). Then I pulled off the cover of the left front speaker and pulled the speaker out. If you lay a bright work light on the floor board near the brake pedal, and peer down thru the speaker opening thru the windshield, you can see a bit of a passage down thru the tangle. That's what I shot for. Feed a length of new speaker wire down thru that mess. Takes a bit of patience(ok, alot of patience!) Then you need to feed it over to the center console. From there i used a piece of stiff wire, like a coat hanger straightened out, taped the speaker wire to one end, and fed it thru the side of the center console to the area behind the deck cavity.
For the right front speaker, pull out the glove box and you can see the wires coming down from the speaker. I just cut it at a good, easy to get to place, and spliced a new wire on there. Then use that piece of coat hanger, tape the speaker wire to it again, and feed the coat hanger thru that side panel of the center console.
There you go. make sure to get the polarities right, or the bass will suck big time.
Piece of cake, huh!

Took me a couple hours to do all this, but boy was it worth it! I connected all the wires and turned it on before I put it all back together to make sure everything worked right, and couldn't believe the diff!
Good luck! Let me know if ya get it

RickD thanks for the description, it inspired me to try it out. What I did though was a bit different.

I pulled the fader lines out as you did, I than released the 6 wires combo and pulled it to the front (it wasn't easy). Than I removed the cover that covered the 6 wires and saw exactly how it was wired. There I found the wires that got to the rear and the wires that go to the front. The wires came in pairs so it was easy to know how to route them. What I did to figure out which pair goes to the right or the left and front or rear was to use 1.5 volt AAA battery :-). It is low enough voltage not to damage the speakers yet produced enough sound to find out which speaker was active. This way I found which wires go to the front too. This method helped me not to rewire anything in the car just use the existing wires (I didn't feel like pulling wires to the rear or the front). Also for the connection I soldered the wires (I didn't use the twist (sp) method) and covered with heat shrink tubes for insulation. I'm really happy with the sound quality now.

Yossi

Meta6981 · #9 06-10-2005, 08:22 PM

i recnetly put in a new deck in my ride and i didn't do anything to the fader, it sounds fairly good i mean compared to the old busted up radio that was in there that could not hold a radio station, i have not really had a need too. although just last night it sounded like a bizz or rattle in my left dash speaker so it could be the fader tweaking or just because its the origional speakers.

Treeman · #10 02-25-2006, 08:46 PM

Thanks

Rahulio1989300E · #11 06-03-2006, 05:54 PM

Hello,

I installed new front speakers recently,

I am now wanting bypass the fader before I get new rear speakers and a new deck.

I am having a bit of trouble understanding the instructions.. I am a visual learner...

Can someone please be even more detailed description?

Thanks