I appologize if this has been posted before, or can be found in the FAQ. Cut me a break, I haven't had a technical problem with my empeg in 4 years.

I've been having a problem with my empeg. Every once and a while, the front left channel will just cut out completely. The first time this happened was right after one of the rare times I remove it from my car to put music on it. I brought it back in, and all of a sudden there was no sound on my side of the car.

Now it appears to happen whenever I hit a particularly big bump. Sometimes I can jostle the empeg up and down in the DIN slot, and it'll cut back in. Another thing that seems to affect it is when I slide in the cup holder right underneath the slot too fast.

So, I suppose that this means there's something getting disconnected in the back, but it seems very pretty tenuous.

Does it sound like something pretty bad, like something I can fix myself? I'm a little nervous about removing the sled myself. I had a professional install it...

Thanks guys!

Could be a dirty pin. See if you can clean both the plug on the empeg and the socket in the sled.

Thanks! I'll try that!

Could also be a loose wire in the installation somewhere. Perhaps the problem is at the amplifier, or the wires going to the amplifier, or the speaker wires.

Sometimes the pins can come a little loose from the plug and socket housings. I can't think of a good way to inspect them without taking the sled out, though.

Definitely NOT. If you do this, and abrade off the gold plating, the connector on *both* the player and the sled will die a long, lingering death.

It's more likely that it's the bad crimp issue on the harness behind the sled.

Sled out, mate

I didn't mean he should try and clean it with a rasp. I meant some alcohol or something.

Gold doesn't oxidise: that's why it's on connectors. Also, if you look carefully at the connector pin design on both halves, the pins self-wipe on insertion on removal.

For there to be un-removable muck on the pins not removed by the self-wiping action, it is highly unlikely an alcohol clean will do it.

And no, I was not implying that you meant people would do something as daft as this - but they do (I've seen the results) so I am inclined not to even suggest this sort of idea any more.

Invariably, bad sound comes from a bad contact. It's (as Tony suggests) either in the audio path between the sled connection and the speakers, or - more likely - bad crimping and no stress relief in the harness behind the plug in the sled.

Sorry - there's no other option: sled out, examine the connections to the plug. I am prepared to put money on the shield braid for the bad speaker channel being loose in the pin due to a bad crimp.

Ouch. I was hoping it wasn't a crimping issue that just happened to crop up late. I'll check on that. It's definitely possible that they didn't provide enough slack behind the dash, especially given that pushing in the cup holder occasionally effects it.

Is it reasonable to assume that there's at least enough slack for me to remove the sled? I guess I'll find out either way. I've got to repair this, as I've found that any additional frustration on a DC commute puts me over the top. I don't think the cops would take "my empeg is having problems" as an excuse for rear-ending somebody who was keeping a 5 car following distance in heavy traffic