Friends, Empeggers, countrymen, I need your help! (And, yes, I'm reading through the FAQ as you read this).

I'm getting my Mark I installed in my Nissan NX (finally!) by a professional installer. Basically he's hooked up the chassis on his test rig - black to ground, yellow to 12V - and found 15V output on the orange 'accessory' wire. He therefore didn't install it because of fears that it would have cooked something important in my car's electronics. Is this something to worry about?

I do trust him generally - he's done a very good install (on a non-Empeg stereo) on a friend's car and he's won all sorts of awards for his demo cars. He also fixed the blown bulb in the dashboard and fitted a stereo I purchased from elsewhere for a pretty reasonable sum. And I have little experience with car installations so I don't know for sure one way or another.

But I couldn't find any of the old documentation for the Mark I to explain whether that was in fact the accessory wire or something else. The Mark II manual is the only one I could find on the empeg.com site - anyone got a copy of the old manual to hand in PDF format?

He also encountered the old problem with the leads out of the Mark I needing resoldering and/or re-insulating: slot the Mark I into the chassis one time and it all sounds fine; do it again and there's pops and crackles all over the place. Can someone just confirm my dodgy memory that this was a problem with Mark Is and that I should just unscrew the docking connector and resolder the various connections to fix this?

Thanks very much in advance,

Paul

Hmmm, I've never had or seen a Mark I, but I distinctly remember it not having an 'accessory' wire in the sense of being able to sense if the car was on or not. (It's simply wired with the power into the acessory circuit). Perhaps the orange wire is the remote amp turn on wire?

Matthew

Yep, (looking at the MkI sled) the orange wire is the amp remote turn on. Red is power (to accessory or constant, depending on how you use the empeg) and black is ground.

Don't forget the ground on the RCAs (ground by the amp, IIRC)

Also, give the contacts in the connectors a periodical cleaning with alcohol and Q-tips or something similar - they have a tendency to build up crud that lead to poor contact and crackling.

/Michael

In reply to:

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Yep, (looking at the MkI sled) the orange wire is the amp remote turn on. Red is power (to accessory or constant, depending on how you use the empeg) and black is ground.

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OK, that'd make sense of what they were getting. It may be that they were getting 15V into a little voltmeter but the real amplifier would be OK with this (will check...)

In reply to:

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Also, give the contacts in the connectors a periodical cleaning with alcohol and Q-tips or something similar - they have a tendency to build up crud that lead to poor contact and crackling.

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Ahhh. This makes sense. I'll have a look at the contacts.

The aerial wire still looks like it needs resoldering; will do that.

Thanks very much for the advice; anyone with an old empeg Mark I manual PDF out there?

Thanks very much for the advice; anyone with an old empeg Mark I manual PDF out there?

I don't have it handy at the moment, but the pinouts for the Mk1 docking connector are listed here in the developer's section of riocar.org. From there you can extrapolate the correct wiring.

And yes, the color-coding on the Mk1 wires is not the same as the "standard" color coding that's used for other aftermarket stereos. So don't go by color when hooking things up.

Also remember that since the Mk1 does not have an accessory wire, you are supposed to hook up its only power wire (I think it's the yellow one, not sure) to your car's accessory wire. That way the player will turn on and off with you car's ignition. The player also does not have a headlight-sense wire.

And since you're installing a Mk1 player, make sure to read this.

Thanks, Tony! I knew you'd fill in any gaps. I had remembered / worked out about the lack of headlight and accessory input, and the lack of 'phone mute'. Is there a 'mute' (e.g. press a button or combination and the volume automatically drops by -20dB, to be restored by another button (combination) press)? I haven't kept pace with the myriad features in the betas or the hijack kernel.

Is there a 'mute' (e.g. press a button or combination and the volume automatically drops by -20dB, to be restored by another button (combination) press)?

Yes, but only if you use the Rio remote control. The feature is not available from the front panel, nor from the Kenwood remote control. You must also be running the latest beta software to have the feature. Button guide is here.

Well, the good news is that I've had the Mark I installed. The grin on my face as it booted up in the dash (after all these years) was near headsplitting! And for stock speakers, they're doing pretty well - the ambience and stage feel on "The Man's Too Strong" by Dire Straits was tangible and the punch on "We Mess With Your Head" by Josh Abrahams was enough to make me turn it down (*gasps of amazement*). Even the friend that's been critical of MP3 music quality was impressed.

The only minor annoyance is that I told them (in a moment of confusion) to hook it up to permanent power rather than accessory - so the thing's on all the time if it's in dash. Still, OT1H it's (one) more encouragement to take the empeg out of the dash when I get out; OTOH the blue led pulsing in the dark looks like the ice-devil's alarm system. So I'm not really that worried about it.

Thanks for the help!

Paul

I also had my Mk1 player hooked up to the permanent power. It worked well except it had the following issues:

- Leaving the player in the car for a long period of time (such as a weekend) can be a drain on the battery. The CPU is still running when it's in standby mode, so it does draw a certain amount of current. You shouldn't ever leave it in the car anyway, because it can get stolen if you do.

- You will have problems with "pop" sounds coming through the amplifier when you turn the ignition on and off, especially if you are starting the car engine while the player is playing. You'll need to be mindful of things like making sure to put the player into standby mode before starting the engine.

- You will occasionally run into boot-up issues if you put the player in the car and then start the engine while the player is in the middle of its boot process.

But if you're willing to work around those issues, then you are welcome to leave it hooked up to the permanent power. It has the advantage of letting you listen to the player even with the engine off.

Ideally, of course, you would have a Mk2 which has a separate ignition-sense wire and can work around all of these issues and give you the best of both worlds.