High Pitch Feedback JBL Audio

Hi all. My ‘21 TRD Pro has JBL “Premium“ (cough, cough) sound system. Just started getting high pitched whistle when doing anything: playing FM / AM, Sirius XM, voice calls, Apple Music. Shut down AC / fan thinking there might be a short causing the whistle - no luck. Bringing to stealership to get it looked at - betting they are going to tell me the head unit is bad. Has anybody else experienced this? Any diagnostic tricks? Thoughts?

 

Possibly bad ground somewhere, not short.

 

does it do it with engine on and off?

could be head, could be amp.

I can't say I've seen many (if any) posts about this issue so it could certainly be a bad head unit or amp.
Being a '21, your 3 year warranty may still be honored.

 

Yes, it does it in accessory mode as well. Hopefully if bad head unit they will honor 3 yr warranty even though warranty expired in February’21.

 

Iffin it is a bad head unit and Toyota hangs me out to dry - thinking is it better to get away from JBL and go with completely different HU from Crutchfield? Any recommendations? Would want better sound if I am going through all this and prolly upgrade speakers too.

 

For JBL, upgrading the head unit pretty much won’t change your audio quality at all. It will just interface with the JBL amp. You can definitely get some units that add in a ton of extra features and will cost way less than the 2–3 grand Toyota wants for a OEM head unit

If you decide to tackle the speakers, you’ll pretty much need to replace the JBL amp as well.

 

@destin_meeks Thanks for keepin it real for me Destin. Kinda what I thought but really appreciate your confirmation. $2-3K, I may be living lean if it is a bad head unit and Toyota doesn’t find sympathy. Will keep you posted.

 

The absolute top end After market head unit runs like 1500 bucks. Great head units can be had for a grand. There are some solid units below that if you have a budget to fit in. If you wait for sales, you can knock another 200 off. And of course, you can check the marketplace here or head to eBay and look for used. Most of them work fine and people just upgraded to aftermarket and don’t need it anymore. You’ll have 200–300 in parts, no matter what head unit you get unless you stick with OEM.

 

After about a week of chasing codes, Toyota Tech and “TAS” group isolated issue to bad Parking Assist Comput
- at this point. I’m at $1600 all in and 500 miles outside of warranty - bummed. Hoping they can cut me a break. I also thought “I’m a pretty driver, I don’t need no damn Park Assist - disable it”. Guess it’s not that easy, everything is all interconnected and is processed through the head unit. Hope this is the fix.

 

After about 3 weeks, 2 technical cases opened with Toyota (1: Park Assist Computer - wrong diagnosis 2: Amplifier - wrong diagnosis) dealer and tech finally swapped out the head unit to find HU was blown - which I suggested when I brought my truck in. I’m at 36,500 miles - waiting to see if Toyota is going to offer some type of warranty coverage. Don’t think I should be on the hook because they were putting hours and technical resources into chasing everything but the obvious. Each time they came back with something, I would ask “how would that relate to the high pitched whistle “, they would say that it all interfaces with the HU. To which I would say - that sounds like the common link - perhaps the HU is blown. Not to mention this is my 2nd Tacoma and it is a TRD Pro - top end of their trim package . Painful.