Curtis4661

Hi, I have a mint 1995 Toyota Celsior. I believe it's identical to the 95 lexus ls400. The factory sound system actually sounds amazing but I would like to replace the factory head unit with an aftermarket pioneer double din so that I can have Bluetooth features. I want to know how to retain the factory sound (utilizing the factory amp and sub) while having an aftermarket head unit. I did a fair amount of research and I know that ideally I would use a beatsonic sla-21 harness but my problem is that it's discontinued and I cannot find a way to get one. It appears that the beatsonic harness is actually just a $10 line level input adapter that beatsonic sells for $300 for the convenience of plug and play. I'm fairly good with wiring and I don't mind having to do some cutting and splicing into the factory harness. I guess my question is how exactly should I go about getting the factory sub and amp to work? I did find a diagram so I know which wires are the subwoofer+ and subwoofer- but im not sure if I can just connect the + and - from a cut off rca cable to them and them plug them into the back of the head unit. What about getting the amp to turn on? This is where the other write ups are lacking. Does anyone know how this could actually work?

400fanboy

Does your car have navigation? I think it was an available option in your 95'

It makes things a lot more difficult because the audio system is tied into the computer that runs all of that stuff.

Curtis4661

It's just the "premium sound" head unit, no navigation or nakamachi

sdls

I did something on my 96 LS400 where I spliced into the CD changer line and ran an aux jack to it, and kept a cd with a blank track playing. It worked fine.

N0b0dy

Do you have instructions on how to add the Aux jack to the CD changer line?

sdls

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/lex...-stereo-2.html

Curtis4661

My celsior actually doesn't have a cd changer. I guess I'll try to solder the positive and negative wire of a rca male end to the positive and negative wire for the sub and connect a line out converter to the front speaker harness and plug the rca into that so it's the right voltage. If that doesn't work, im not sure what to do

Stroock639

you won't be able to maintain the factory sound if you switch the head unit... much of the magic goes on within the head unit itself, from the super high quality materials used and the obsessively perfected audio processing unit it's a big part of why it sounds so amazing

i use a cassette adaptor and have absolutely no complaints about audio quality, in fact i'd say that a hq audio file played through the cassette adaptor still has far more oompf to it than almost any modern system i've encountered... high quality audio was more important 20 years ago than it is today, you really feel a nice bass drum kick in your chest and the treble from a horn instrument makes its way up your spine and into your head

the factory head unit also just looks amazing how well its integrated into the rest of the dash, just no bluetooth lol

Stroock639

that means it's a Pioneer system, which is good for you since Nakamichi is no longer in business but Pioneer parts can still be bought

Einzelherz

I'm a fan of the factory sound so that's why I'm adding to it (aux in, dedicated carphone). That gives me everything I need and I get to avoid bluetooth quality loss.

Curtis4661

As long as you put in a high quality head unit ($400+) you won't notice a loss in quality of playback, although you definitely will if you take out the factory head unit for a cheap sub $200 double din stereo

Einzelherz

afaik there isn't a lossless bluetooth codec yet.