On AM I got this tone that disappeared once the car was "warmed up" - I was getting this slow sine wave up/down noise over the audio (hmm, excuse the rough description there).

Ooo. Ooo. I get this too. I reported it to the guys, and they poked fun at me. Told me the vaccum had leaked out of the "Valves". I actually bought it for a while because I didn't know "valve" was britspeak for "tubes".

Note that it's not the car warm-up. It's the tuner module warm up as far as I can tell. When you power off the empeg and power it back on again, the problem returns.

I only get it on certain frequencies. For instance I can hear it on AM 1530 very loud, but not hardly at all on AM 830.

I wonder if it's a Honda-specific thing. Anyone else get this?


Tony, can you please re-explain again your suggestion WRT using that power antenna lead?

Some cars have an antenna signal booster built into the antenna, which must be powered when you are listening to the radio.

Some cars have a mechanical antenna which must be raised when you are listening to the radio.

Some cars have both.

There are two wires on the empeg that can be used to power such devices: 1) The blue Amplifier Remote Activation wire coming out of the docking sled. 2) The blue Power Antenna Activation wire coming out of the tuner module's extension cable connector.

You may use either of those two wires (but not both, and do not connect them to each other) to power the various and sundry antenna devices I just listed.

The Amplifier Remote wire will be activated whenever your player is turned on. So if you use this one on a mechanical antenna, this means the antenna will be raised even when you are listening to MP3s. So you can't listen to MP3s while in the car wash. If you only have an antenna amplifier, then this is a perfectly acceptable way to power it.

The Power Antenna wire is supposed to be activated whenever the tuner is active. This is the recommended way to activate a power antenna of either type. There are some known bugs with this implementation which hopefully will be sorted out in the next software release.


Know that I have no free wire in the dash to hook this up to though - that and, for all I know, there is no such wire in the car to begin with.

It would not necessarily be a free wire. If it was a separate wire at all, it would probably be part of a harness assembly. Do you have full and accurate documentation on the harness pinouts in that car?

It is possible your car does not require or use an antenna amplifier at all. However, all of your symptoms still point to an antenna amplifier that is not being activated properly. Either that, or the antenna cable itself has become damaged/frayed, or its connection with the tuner module is not solid. Or there's something wrong with the sled/tuner wiring.

I'm not certain about this, but there might be some kind of system where the power is actually supplied down the antenna line itself. If that's the case, you would need an adapter of some kind to be fitted on the end of the antenna wire. I don't know if these are necessary on your model of car. Don't the new Volkswagens do something like this?

You do actually have the honda antenna plugged into the tuner module, right? You can also try getting a loop of wire (I forget the length it's supposed to be-- anyone?), creating your own makeshift antenna, and connecting it to the tuner module tip/sleeve and see if the reception improves. Not as a permanent thing, just to help narrow it down.