How do OEM premium speakers hook up to aftermarket amps?

[ghrays]

I am trying to restore the look of my 1990 325i coupe audio system. The original radio and wiring for the speakers are gone. The rear parcel shelf speakers being no longer available new, I bought a used pair (65131386087). I would like to purchase a pair of the premium speakers for the front kick panels (65131386546) as well as a pair of tweeters (65131377687 and 65131377688) for the window sails. The front speakers/tweeters are still available new.

I have from another project a nice JL Audio 600/4 amp, and I was going to get a modern head unit with bluetooth, etc. I will run RCAs from the head unit to the amp in the trunk.

My difficulty or question is regarding how to wire the speakers to the amp. I only see one terminal to attach wires to each of the rear woofers and tweeters. I would have expected two (+ and -) for each woofer and each tweeter.

Similarly, when I examine a picture of the front 5.25" premium speaker, I again see only one terminal for speaker wire connection.

Finally, would my plan of using the OEM premium speakers be okay without any outboard crossovers? I don't see any on the schematics of the OEM speaker connection on realoem.com.

[agent]

This is covered in-depth in the two sticky threads at the top of this subforum by Luke/Stereoinstaller1.

[ghrays]

This is covered in-depth in the two sticky threads at the top of this subforum by Luke/Stereoinstaller1.

I reviewed all 543 posts of Luke's Radio Wiring and amp bypass thread. I don't see my specific question addressed, there are lot of explanations of how to wire the speakers using factory wiring after removing the factory amp. I am asking how to wire the OEM speakers with aftermarket amp and standard speaker wire, not the OEM wiring harness.

[agent]

Sorry about that, I admittedly didn't read your post word for word on the first pass.

[reelizmpro]

Positive and negative. Picture shows how the tweeter is wired in to the built in passive crossover on the mid.

[Jean]

The premium speaker basically has a COIL and CAP, the coil is wired in series with the woofer and the cap is wired in series with the tweeter. It's basically a 1st order (6db / octave) crossover.

So one pair of connectors PER the pair (woofer/mid) is what you should expect. If you want , you surely can run ONE amplifier channel PER driver (tweeter and woofer) so you'll end up needing 4 amplifier channels for the rear two premium speakers. But this is probably not something you want to do, as you'll need to actively cross them over as well...and it's just not worth it for the REAR speakers.

a. 1 channel per rear speaker side (woofer + tweeter)
b. 2 channels per rear speaker side (woofer + tweeter) in BI-AMP configuration is when you use passive crossover at the speaker level (coil, caps etc) but each amplifier channel is dedicated per the driver .
c. 2 channels per rear speakers w/o any passive components (no caps or coils AFTER the amp) = active setup, meaning you'll need to run active crossover to highness the tweeter at and low-pass or band-pass the midwoofer.

Your amplifier should have a high-pass , if your amp does not, then perhaps your headunit does.

Keep it simple stupid :) KISS