Need some direction

[Drew L]

Installed and older vintage head unit w/cd. The problem I'm having is when listening to the radio in the stereo mode the signal is garbled so in order to eliminate that I can put it in the mono mode and it clears up . This problem does not exist when playing a cdd. Thoughts???????? Thank you Drew

 

[GNandTTA]

What brand cd player? Alot of times after market radios use better more sensitive tuners. Which means they can also be more suceptible to noise. So could be a bad antenna or maybe the fender is not bonded correctly. You may need to add a ground strap on the fender to correctly ground it to the chassis. Try hooking up an antenna inside the car and drive around.

 

[Drew L]

Pioneer supertuner 3. I told you it was old. I can still pick up radio stations in Boston (60 miles away) so logically speaking I don't think it is the antenna. Mixing up the positive and negative on the speaker wires cause this? The balance works so I don't know. What little I know of stereo systems maybe the head is bad or something like that. Drew

 

[GNandTTA]

Many times intrferance will make stereo reception poor and by simply hitting the mono switch it clears up. This interference is often caused by electrical noise from the motor (coil pack, plug wires, etc). Try the antenna in the car, see if that clears it up.

 

[Drew L]

I wouldn't describe it as interferrence. It sounds more like when you turn it up past what the speakers can handle and the sound quality becomes broken and garbled. That is the best desciption I can give but this happens at any volume. drew

 

[Drew L]

update

I went to an automotive stereo shop local and corralled the guy for some advice. He brought out a new antenna so we tried that but that wasn't it. Let's see if I can regurgitate this properly, pushing the mono button directs the signal into less channels/power so when trying the stereo setting it's receiving a strong enough sigal. Something about a "crystal" that controls incoming signal strength. In other words the head unit has to be repaired or replaced to cure the problem. Sound plausible? Drew