Coaxial Speakers w/ Harmon Kardon

[jmclaugh]

Hey everyone,

 

Back with another one

 

I'm installing coaxial speakers into the front doors of a 2011 legacy, with the harmon kardon upgrade. I wired the speakers in and without thinking, they are only getting the midbass frequency and the factory tweeters are still tweeting away.

 

I'd like the new coaxial speaker to get the full frequency range. Has anyone else tackled something like this, and if so how?

 

I researched and found this:http://audiowiringdiagram.com/car/2010-subaru-legacy-radio-audio-harmon-kardon-wiring-diagram-schematic-colors-install/ pinout for the H/K amp, and my idea was to cut the positive and negative leads from the tweeters and splice them into the door speaker wiring, right there at the amp under the passenger seat. Is that the typical way to go about this?

 

Thanks in advance.

[utc_pyro]

That amp has basically has a really fancy DSP in it correcting for the speaker locations, cabin gain, and serving as an active x-over to match the speakers to their performance capabilities. It knows better than you.

 

Also you can't really combine the speaker outputs passively like that. That's how you blow your VERY expensive HK amp/DSP.

 

You really have three options.

 

A) Pull out your coaxial, fit another midrange to put in there. Parts-express.com or used on Ebay is your firend.

 

B) Above but buy a set of COMPONENT SPEAKERS. Replace the OEM tweeter with the one from the kit, DO NOT USE THE CROSSOVERS. Let the DSP do it's thing.

 

C) Go full custom, completely bypass the HK amp for ALL off your speakers.

 

For C the HK head unit technically can drive the speakers directly, but it'd be really quiet. You'd really need to replace the HK amp with a new one and run component/coaxial front and rear with passive x-overs. There are some fairly good 5-channel ones that will fit in the same spot as the OEM one. You MIGHT be able to get away with disconnecting the "front" signal wires going into the amp and feeding the new speakers off those while leaving the rest alone, but you'd need to set the fade 75% toward the front.