Although Pioneer radios have a standard color scheme for the speaker wires, other wires might be colored differently.
On top of that, many double-din radios have additional wires such as reverse gear input, external mute, parking brake, etc.
Since we have to match so many wires during the installation, any mix-up can cause issues with the radio. Sometimes, it doesn’t even allow the radio to turn on.
In this post, we’ll discuss the wirings for some pioneer radios.
Pioneer Radio Wiring Diagram Color Codes
We’ve picked models from the pioneer MVH, AVH, and DMH series for the demo.
The main reason behind this is that the MVH series consists of small-screen, affordable single-din head units. While the AVH and DMH models usually fall into touchscreen-based double-din stereo category.
Pioneer MVH-S215BT Wiring Diagram
- Yellow – Constant 12V wire
- Red – Ignition wire
- Orange and White – Illumination wire (not in every head unit)
- Black – Ground wire
- Blue and White – Remote Turn-on wire
- White – Left-front Positive Speaker wire
- White with Black stripes – Left-front Negative Speaker wire
- Green – Left-rear Positive Speaker wire
- Green with Black stripe – Left-rear Negative Speaker wire
- Gray – Right-front Positive Speaker wire
- Gray with Black stripes – Right-front Negative Speaker wire
- Purple – Right-rear Positive Speaker wire
- Purple with Black stripe – Right-rear Negative Speaker wire
Pioneer AVH-3500NEX and DMH-341EX Wiring Diagram Color Code
- Yellow – Constant 12V wire
- Red – Ignition wire
- Orange and White – Illumination wire
- Black – Ground wire
- Violet and White – Reverse Gear Input
- Yellow and Black – External Mute
- Light Green – Parking Brake ON/OFF wire
- Blue and White – Remote Turn-on wire
- White – Left-front Positive Speaker wire
- White with Black stripes – Left-front Negative Speaker wire
- Green – Left-rear Positive Speaker wire
- Green with Black stripe – Left-rear Negative Speaker wire
- Gray – Right-front Positive Speaker wire
- Gray with Black stripes – Right-front Negative Speaker wire
- Purple – Right-rear Positive Speaker wire
- Purple with Black stripe – Right-rear Negative Speaker wire
Car Stereo Wires
Below we’ll talk about different types of car stereo wires and their functions.
Constant 12V wire
This wire provides ‘constant’ 12V power to the car radio. So that the critical functions in the radio, such as current time/date, soundtrack, radio station presets, etc. are saved (and don’t get reset) when you turn off the vehicle.
Ignition wire
Unlike the constant 12V wire, the ignition only provides power when the ignition key is in the accessory position. It turns the radio on when a vehicle starts. It’s also called the accessory wire in other radios’ manuals.
Illumination wire
The illumination wire dims the brightness of the car radio screen when you turn on the vehicle’s headlights.
Ground wire
Grounding is necessary to prevent current overflow (voltage surges) and even eliminate noise in some cases. For that purpose, we use the ground wire.
Amp Turn-On wire
This wire sends a turn-on signal to an aftermarket amplifier. If this wire doesn’t work, your amp will not turn on/off with the ignition key. This wire is colored blue/white, and that’s why many people confuse it with the power antenna wire (colored solid Blue).
In reality, the power antenna wire is only for the FM antenna.
Speaker Wires
At least we have the eight speaker wires. These wires correspond to the negative and positive wires for the left-front, right-front, left-rear, and right-rear – the traditional 4-speaker system found in most cars.
