# 1997 Maxima amp location



## jtandori (Jul 1, 2007)

Hi everybody! I have a 97 Maxima and I replaced the radio, but I can't find where the amplifier is located (it is not in the trunk). It should be either a 4 ch amp or 2x 2ch amps. Any help is highy appreciated. The amp should be a Bose brand as the radio I removed was a Bose with a CD player on top.

Thank you!

John


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## JNCoRacer (Apr 18, 2003)

If you have a Bose system then the amp for the front speakers should be located inside a black box next to the speaker on the passenger side. You have totake the door paneloff to access it. For the back the amps are inside the speaker covers which you can access from inside the trunk.


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## jtandori (Jul 1, 2007)

This makes sense, I was wondering why so many wires for the rear speakers! The reason I want to get to the amp is because I was hoping for a gain trim control on the amp. The issue I'm having is that with the new radio I installed, if I drive the amp from the speaker output of the radio the sound is distorted and it has a lot of noise (bad amplifiers in my new cheap radio). So I figured no problem, I can use the line outputs. True, it works, the sound is good, but I cannot drive the amps hard enough. If there's no gain control on the amps, I may need to make a signal booster. I'll go and take the door panel out.
Many thanks for your reply!


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## theubergeek (May 6, 2007)

by pass the amp they get real choppy and bad sounding with different speakers installed


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## jtandori (Jul 1, 2007)

I opened the passenger door panel and found the amplifier (front) exactly where JNCoRacer said it would be. Took it apart (I'm an audio design engineer by trade, but never did any real work on car audio, my experience is in mostly pro-audio and high-end home theater systems) and I found a nicely built class D amp with balanced inputs. The amplifier was optimized for the speakers it is driving and it worked very well with the old Bose radio (CD player died on it and I decided to change it). 

I intended to keep the amps and speakers, change just the radio, but the amplifiers are not sensitive enough to be driven by the RCAs from the new radio, and the power amps that came with the radio are horrible. Besides, the inputs of the Bose amps are balanced, the RCA line outputs the new radio has are not (just single ended) so I loose half the signal (6dBs) right there. I was looking for a gain control on the amps, but there's none available. I will have to build a 4x preamp with single ended line inputs and balanced outputs. Too easy, should take me a half a day to make it, I was just looking for an easier solution and since I'm not very familiar with car audio systems I did not know where to find the amplifiers on my car.


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