Hello again. I found these instructions on a mazda forum which details what must be done for the Bose preamp. I don't know what the instructions mean to solder an RCA wire onto the "pole of the plug that connects to the ring" or "pole of plug that connects to the post."
I have a generic non named double din stereo that my brother bought me from Amazon. If it weren't for the Bose preamp the installation would be easy.
"If you have the Bose system, and you hook up the speaker wires of your new head unit to the "speaker" wires in the Bose harness, you will be sending an amplified signal to the Bose amplifier's preamp input and the result will be less than stellar, actually quite crappy, sound. On the other hand, this also allows you to easily integrate an aftermarket deck using it's preamp (rather than speaker) outputs. So you can run the Bose system off of a different head unit. Research shows that the signal processing for the Bose system is actually performed in the amplifier. So the system should perform identically even if you replace the head unit. To do this, it's as easy as soldering on 4 male RCA plugs to the "speaker" wires in the Metra harness. The negative "speaker" wire should be soldered to the pole on the plug that connects to the ring. The positive "speaker" wire should be soldered to the pole on the plug that connects to the post. Once you've done this for the FR, FL, RR and LR "speaker" wires, all you have to do is plug in your front and rear RCA jacks from your head unit and all should work well. One thing to note on this sort of set up. You will want to be very judicious with the volume control until you figure out how the system is going to perform. Some aftermarket head units have very strong preamp signals that could easily overdrive the Bose amp if care is not taken. If it turns out that your system is reaching full volume at low settings on the volume control, the preamp output will probably have to be padded. Another note on the Bose system is that there is no way to run the stock Bose speakers off of an aftermarket head unit without using the Bose amp." - Mazda6club
Sunday, July 14th, 2019 AT 12:37 PM