Saab Clarion Audio System

[henrikg]

Added MY85 manual aswell + partnumbers to the list! :-)

[drwatson32]

Attachment 8511Attachment 8512Attachment 8513

So you've been wondering about the '86-'87 equalizer. The thing baffles me. What you would think are ground wires don't appear to work as grounds. I've had access to 2 units which exhibited the same behavior, but here's the gist of it, by din cable wire colors:
Red: 12v
Chassis: ground
That's all you need to power the equalizer up. It'll start in eq mode, for about 5 seconds, then reverts to the spectrum analyzer.
Blue: 12v for illumination
Red/white: input (presumably left)
Brown/white: input (presumably right)

Here's where it gets weird- I could only get the units to power up if I used the chassis as a ground. What was presumably the signal ground didn't seem to work either, so had to ground signal to the chassis, also, on the test bench.

Note: to anyone thinking of trying this, I highly recommend assuming that your grounds work and skip this next part and come back to it if you otherwise have no bar activity. Since I was only aiming to get a visual display, I only used one of the signal inputs. In order to get bar graph activity at reasonably volume levels, you must bypass the corresponding resistor. (Attached is a picture pointing them out. There are 2 pcbs inside the unit, look on the bottom pcb; they're near the white ribbon connector.)

Assumed, but not tested (or simply didn't work for me) wires-

Inside sheath green: left output
Inside sheath gray: right output
Inside sheath copper braiding: signal ground
Blue/white: illumination ground, but illumination works without it
White: mute possibly
Brown: possibly original ground, it's a slightly heavier gauge copper wire
Yellow: might be 12v for memory, but it didn't make a difference on my units.

In my car, I ultimately ran an ungrounded, amplified audio signal to the eq, as grounding the signal to the eq sent my head unit into a protect mode. With this oddball grounding problem, the equalizer will only respond to an amplified signal, so the bar activity is linear to the volume level. This setup could certainly use some additional figuring out; I'm hoping that my 2 units both had an identical ground problem and someone can figure these completely out. Though, in my case, I'm really pretty happy with the end result.

Here's a video of it on the workbench- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjvWVqZNlqQ I never did take video of it in the car, but you get the idea. I hope this helps somebody.

It drives me nuts that I can't go back and edit this. I'm not exactly sure what I was doing wrong all those years ago, but I had the pinout *mostly* right. The EQ operates on a line level (actually a bit under that) signal, as you'd probably imagine.
The pinout for 86-87 equalizers is as follows, the DIN pins are numbered if you look closely:
1. Illumination
2. 5v constant (not 12v)
3. antenna trigger (I don't know what the EQ uses it for, if anything)
4. muting circuit (I believe it's high when when tapes are loaded/ff/rw/etc)
5. no pin here (it corresponds with 12v constant at the amplifier din plug, which the deck uses, but EQ needs the 5v for memory)
6. signal ground
7. right output
8. left output
9. no pin here (it's ground in the amplifier din plug, EQ gets ground from the DIN plug barrel)
10. switched 12v
11. right input
12. left input

The pinout for the amplifier has the differences noted above, but with regards to the signal wires, which are running from the cassette deck to the amplifier-
7. right rear output
8. left rear output
11. right front output
12. left front output




For 1988-1991, the pinout shown on saabclarion.se has the inputs and outputs flip-flopped. The pinout is as follows:
1. would be for CD, unused for EQ
2. ground, although separate from pin 4, and neither ground to chassis
3. illumination
4. ground
5. 12v constant
6. signal ground
7. right output
8. left output
9. muting circuit
10. antenna trigger
11. right input
12. left input

I'll circle back to this thread once I figure out what is going on with the separate grounds.
(I'm working on some breakout PCBs, so am trying to finalize these pinouts.)