96 Tbird stereo question

Greetings! I'm new here so hope I'm headed in the right direction.

I recently bought a sharp 96 Tbird but its stereo and speakers had been removed. The only thing left was the booster in the trunk. I was informed at Circuit City that any after market system that I tried to put in would have to be circuited around the power booster otherwise the speakers wouldn't handle it. Is this true?

Thanks,
Mark

not quite sure about this one bud. i know alot about stereos but i don't come anywhere close to the booster sorry

Funny that the guy at "Circuit City" said it has to be "circuited" around the booster. (I always call it the factory amp, but in this thread I'll call it the booster). All you have to do is bypass it. He was just being a circuit city dork, and trying to make it sound technical by saying circuit. Let me tell you what he should have told you. If you are not using the factory cd player, then you dont need the booster. You just need to make it so the speakers are wired directly off the head unit. Heres the most difficult part about it... The speaker wires from the Head Unit go to the booster, and then from the booster, they change the color code, and run to the speakers. If you dont know the color codes, then this would suck to go through and figure out which ones go together, but lucky for you, I'll give you the color codes from the head unit to booster, and from booster to speakers as well. I have to find my paper that I wrote it on, so I'll post that in a few minutes.

These are the wires that actually connect to the speakers..

Front Right Positive: white/green
Front Right Negative: green/orange
Front Left Positive: orange/green
Front Left Negative: blue/white
Rear Right Positive: pink/blue
Rear Right Negative: brown/pink
Rear Left Positive: pink/green
Rear Left Negative: beige/yellow

These are the wires that connect the head unit to the booster, (if you'll notice, all the positives are multi colored and the negatives are single colored. theres a chance it should be opposite, but I hooked mine up this way)...

Front Right +: blue/black
Front Right -: blue
Front Left +: white/red
Front Left -: green
Rear Right +: white/orange
Rear Right -: yellow
Rear Left +: purple/white
Rear Left -: brown

This is how my car is wired, it is the 96 w/ premium sound.

not true. Circuit City is fulla shit, as usual. I have a 1000 watt stereo system in a 96 that they screwed up, starting with my deh840 head unit,which they fried becuse it was crosswired, and then they blamed me for it! I went over to Best Buy and got my whole system rewired. The installer was saying that they get so many complaints about them.
Circuit City hires methadone abusers.

Im gonna ignore that last post. I just remembered that when I hooked up my first aftermarket deck, there was a problem. There was no sound coming from my speakers. Double checked everything, did this did that, looked here looked there. The problem was that the "booster" was killing the signal. After a couple hours of looking for the problem I realized that. It was annoying because the color codes were different so there was a lot of testing channels to get the right speakers on the right channels. The truth is, if you dont bypass the booster, you will get no music. It was made to co-op with the factory cd player, and without it, it will just mess things up. Write down the color codes I gave you, get in your trunk, then cut, strip and crimp the channels together, and then youre ready for a deck and speakers.

you know what, I gotta slap myself in the face for this one. The color codes I gave you for the actual speaker connections are guaranteed correct, but I think that I made my own color codes coming off the deck during my first install. (it was 2 1/2 years ago, its kinda foggy now) A friend chopped the harness off, and tossed it, so Im thinking the color code may be wrong. there I go tryin to be all helpful, and I end up giving false info... lol.. sorry. But I do know for a fact you have to delete the booster in any case. Have you done car audio installs before? and are you planning on doing this one yourself? if not, on both or either, I can help you out with it if you want. All I do is work on my stereo, and weve got the same year, so I know whats goin on in your car. let me know.

Wow - thanks a bunch for the info/help! I haven't even bought a stereo I like yet - took 1 back and am about to take this Wal-mart aftermarket back also. But I'll definitely be needing your help; I'm not all that familiar with hooking these up...
I was considering the option of a salvage yard factory - a friend can get me one for $75. Would it be better to do this so I would be able to use the amp (your right, "booster" ain't the right word)?

My stock cd player began to mess up sometimes, if I was inserting, or ejecting a CD it would get stuck, not play, not be able to switch to radio while it was doing that... I'd be afraid of that same problem. For 75 bucks though, Id say go to best buy and see what you can get. I saw a cd/mp3 player at best buy one time for 79 bucks. And for 100, you can guaranteed get a decent deck with some pre amp outputs.

I'll follow that advice - especially if you think I won't need the stock amp. Will let ya know when & what I go with.
Thanks!

You know it isn't very smart to just settle with the cheapest one. I did the same thing because I am young and think that if I can get a couple of years out of it then I will be ok. WRONG. It worked, well sometimes, for a couple of weeks and then it all went down hill. The CD player just stopped working and then the whole thing would not even switch to the Radio player function. It was a Jensen deck that I believe I paid $79 for. Now I have a Sony CDXF5505, it is the best CD player that I have ever heard in a car. I would highly recomemend this deck to anybody with a Thunderbird.

Is the 5505 similar to the 5700? The 5700 has a detachable face with the volume knob on the left, and has BBE on button 5, and it has 3 pre outs, and has 7 different colors, and plays MP3s. I had the 5700 for a while, and while it was cool, it had a high level of THD (total harmonic distortion) which equates to static... how much did you spend on that deck?

look at the pic in my sig that shows the deck. If your stereo is similar to that, then you can get a lot better sound quality even in the same price range.

For less than $10 you can buy a wiring harness that will by-pass the factory amp. Wal-mart did have these at one time. The packaging will say that it is for 88 and newer ford/mercury/mazda cars with premium/JBL sound. This will save a ton of time and keep you from having to figure out all the wiring color codes.

I have a '95 bird and I recently bypassed the "amp". It worked with tht aftermarket head unit its just that is distorted the crap out of the sound and didnt put out much power. I am now just running them straight off the head unit and they sound SOOO much better. I can actually crank up the volume to about 33 (it would only go up to about 20 before) and let most of the 1300 watts of bass I have in the trunk show off. So take the extra time and by pass it its worth it.

I think the 5700 is very similar to the 5500. Like you said the 5700 has the color changing display. I'm sure it sounds very similar. Good luck!