Harmon Kardon amp in 08 Legacy

What is the interconnection between a stock 09 OB 2.5SE head unit and it's Harmon Kardon 440w amp under the pass seat? We have store credit to use at the local u-pull, The 09 OB SE where we got a bunch of parts for my son's OB has the factory HK system and we can use the credit to basically get all the speakers and the amp and whatever wiring we can find/cut out. This will hopefully go into an 08 Legacy 2.5i Limited. I do not expect to get all the wiring harness out of the donor and I am fine with splicing in all speaker/power wires as needed. Will the speaker level outs on the 08 6 disc changer be suitable as input to the HK 440w amp or are line level connections required?

Your probally better off finding the jdm climate controls and going with an aftermarket stereo and speakers.

It would be way too much work to put a hk system in a car with out it. Also the stock speakers dont sound that bad with an aftermarket stereo installed.

I’m a stereo installer and I can tell you that would be a lot of work for a small payoff. Unless by some odd chance they have the wiring and whatnot already in place but in my experiences that’s never the case

I own an 09 LGT with the HK setup and this 08 Legacy 2.5i Limited with the normal audio. I can tell with certainty that the HK setup is WAY better than the normal non-HK setup.

 

 

Going with the JDM switchout is too expensive. We have store credit to use so the HK amp+speakers will be basically free.

 

 

I am fine with splicing all kinds of speaker/power wires together I just do not know about the line vs speaker level of the interconnection between the head unit and the HK amp.

It’s way better than a non hk unit, marginally better than a jdm swapped with even a cheap deck and doesn’t hold a candle to even a cheap 4ch amp On the stock speakers with a cheap sub. The amount of work to install a 4ch and sub even to the stock head unit will probably be easier than trying to add the hk. Cost wise the hk set up would be cheaper in this case but I’m sure you will end up removing the seats and carpet and removing a large amount of the interior trim and I’m not sure about Subaru but a lot of vehicles intergrade the audio harness into the main body harness. I could be wrong and it could be a bolt in affair and just running an extra harness but it’s usually much more than that.

Best case scenario, there is a harness that plugs in between the existing factory harness and the existing stereo that goes to the amp under the seat and goes back to the sub in the rear. If that’s the case, this will be a pretty neat setup. If you’d like I can see if I can pull the amp wiring. The nice thing in this case is that Subaru’s don’t use serial data to turn a whole lot on so the amp will likely just use a 12v input to turn the amp on.