Speaker help, Left rear hardly working
 

Noticed that the left rear wasnt working so I ordered 4 new speakers from Crutchfields. JBL Stage 502 speakers. Installed 1 of them yesterday (LR) and before I put the panel back on I tested it. Very low volume. Balance from side to side goes 15-0-15 left to right. It has to be of the left side at #12 left to hear both rear speakers and it isnt very loud making me think it was this way before I purchased new speakers. The connections were clean, no water in the door. Stock radio, single CD basic HRR model. Front stock speakers sound as good as new. If I dial it to "0" ( equal balance side to side) on the rear you cant hear the left side at all. So my question, do you think the stereo is shot? No pinched wires in the door jam area.

OK you set the balance; what about the fade?

What is the ohm rating of the new speakers? Same as the old?

fade set to all rear, no fronts. The new speakers are stock replacements. New speaker acts just like old speaker. Forgot to mention, I put the stock speaker back in before door panel and when isolated = fade to rear only and left side, it works identical to the new speaker so I'm almost positive it isnt a speaker problem. unless I'm missing something here. The front balance works great, set at "0" you hear both l and r , rear set at "0" I only hear right speaker. There was no stock speaker damage, it looked fine.

You could try running an extra ground wire from the speaker negative post to a suitable body ground location.
An easy task to see if it's a ground wire problem.
If that's not it, I would then pull the stereo unit and check the plug ins.

I'll give that a try this afternoon. If I go to the trouble of pulling the unit out, I'll replace it with something a little more modern. One problem with the stock stereo is that it would never play "burnt" CD's always displayed "error" or "err". My new Silverado does the same thing, although I use a thumbdrive for music on the truck with 1000's of songs on it and still has plenty of space for more.

Has to be mp3 and cd-r or cd-rw, NOT cd+r/cd+rw. IIRC there are different flavors of mp3 also. And a limit to number of files/folders, specs are different for USB; Owner Manual might help.

I used to listen to books on tape burned onto cds.

Went thru this about a month ago on an HHR I had just bought. some speakers bad and the radio aux was bad as well as no balance control.
Ended up replacing all the speakers and the head unit with a cheapy, Pioneer MVHS600BS. Double height but also half the depth of the original.
No cd, but bluetooth, aux and usb. I agree, USB is the way to go these days. :guitar:

Just pulled the trigger on a new unit Sony WX-920BT
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_158WX9...-WX-920BT.html
Its on back order for a couple of weeks. The extra ground wire directly to the battery didnt help, but it was worth a try. I highly doubt the wiring is bad. The CD's I tried to use are CD-R. They worked fine in my 2009 Silverado, so I have a whole case of them. None of them played in the HHR. This new unit will play anything according to the reviews. I have 20,000 songs on the computer and on some rainy day I will make another usb thumb drive for the new stereo. My 2017 Silverado has the Bose system in it and that system just plain rocks. Crystal clear and as loud as I will ever go. Voice command is hella-kewl. lol

Yup.
You can buy small (~1-4GB) thumb drives on ebay or Amazon for $1 apiece or so, so it is cheap to have your entire music collection on a bunch of sticks. Aside from listening to XM when it is free, that is all I do.

I put all one genre on each stick, so if my mood changes it is easy to change the jams. Can't remember the last time I listened to a CD or the radio.:lol:

New stereo installed. Soldered every wire connection. Left rear speaker works again. Love the looks of it. Multiple colors for illumination, or put it rainbow mode and it goes thru all of the colors. I think there are 15 colors total, blue, green aqua, purple, amber, yellow, red, white, etc... and you can choose 2 colors to go back and forth. i have electric blue on for now, looks nice. First impressions were hmmm, its o.k better than stock but not overly exciting. Needs more bass and midrange. This was on "tuner" mode-- FM radio. Messed with the EQ settings and made it better. Then I slide in a CD that was burnt from the computer. What a difference. Loud, clear, plenty of bass-midrange.etc.. I had to go and reset the EQ for less of everything. Now I like it a lot. It has bluetooth, XM, a USB port with a slide door cover. I resembles the stock unit with the large volume knob in the center. It reads the program and displays it. It can toggle between clock and engine voltage with a touch of the display button. ( never seen voltage displayed on a radio ) This isnt a Bose system but for the money its well worth it. My HHR didnt come with a radio that supported XM radio, but the car has Onstar or at least it used to. Dont know if I can get XM or not. It came with a microphone for hands free phone calling. It also has a connection for steering wheel buttons ( my hhr doesnt have that) 10 different EQ settings or go custom. It has a karaoke mode that takes most of the voices/singing out. And an extra bass setting also. Pandora® Internet radio control with iPhone and Android . A lot of bang for the buck.