Poison
04-12-2011, 10:10 PM
I decided to make a thread to show off my new setup for the summer. More than that though, I wanted to gather this info to help anyone else who winds up in my situation. Three months ago, I was aurally challenged and had no idea how to plan or setup a stereo system. I couldn’t have done it without the help of this forum and David at Earmark. There is no telling how long I spent reading old forum posts and installation guides. None of this is new, but it might help somebody who is considering upgrading.
I did this mainly for the tower upgrades. I wanted to be able to control cabin and tower volumes differently and get something that sounded better than the stock Kenwood speakers into my stock Roswell lightbar/speaker combo. I am by no means an audiophile and 6+ years of military aviation have left my ears a little lacking, but I do know when it sounds bad and wanted an upgrade from the stock system. This is at best a middle of the road setup (non-audiophile here), but after taking it out, it was perfect for what I wanted.
I added the following to the boat:
Kicker 6500.2 Tower System
Kicker 700.5 Amp for the cabin speakers
Krypt KMA 4200 Equalizer (don’t judge me, it was a gift)
To mount the amp, I cut a piece of Medium Density Fiberboard ($10 at home depot) and covered it with outdoor carpet ($3.12 ft) using glue and a couple staples. I then mounted the amp with the supplied screws and the 100A fuse ($30 @ car audio shop). I used 2 gauge wire for all the power connections ($60 for both blue and white – stuff is more expensive than I thought).
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/01.JPG
I mounted it on the left side of the boat under the console using L-brackets. The bottom ones go right into the floor and the top one went into the board that holds the rub rail (see next pic). If you use the rub rail, definitely pre-drill holes with a strong drill…that stuff is tough. Also, need to use some common sense when you do it, I suppose you could drill right through to the other side if you weren’t careful. On another note, be careful drilling into the MDF as it tends to crack if you aren’t careful or get too close to the edge. The amp installation was actually pretty easy. I pretty much copied other people’s forum posts. Since the deck was pushing the cabin speakers (not good if you have 6 speakers like I do, caused me some problems last summer with the deck going into protect mode), I just cut the speaker wire from the harness and ran the existing speaker wire straight into the amp. It is now pushing the cabin speakers and sub.
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/02.JPG
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/03.JPG
Next was the real pain of this whole project, the equalizer. I mounted mine under the dash on the left side. Took me a while to figure this one out. I wound up just using long L-brackets and drilling holes into the fiberglass under the console and secured the whole thing with very short bolts and nuts. I kinda had to pull the plastic apart from the fiberglass just enough to get the screws in. I wish I had a better picture, but there was really no way to get the camera up there now and I didn’t have it handy when I was working on it. Definitely cost me a bloody knuckle or two getting that thing in. Here is the finished product:
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/04.JPG
I did this mainly for the tower upgrades. I wanted to be able to control cabin and tower volumes differently and get something that sounded better than the stock Kenwood speakers into my stock Roswell lightbar/speaker combo. I am by no means an audiophile and 6+ years of military aviation have left my ears a little lacking, but I do know when it sounds bad and wanted an upgrade from the stock system. This is at best a middle of the road setup (non-audiophile here), but after taking it out, it was perfect for what I wanted.
I added the following to the boat:
Kicker 6500.2 Tower System
Kicker 700.5 Amp for the cabin speakers
Krypt KMA 4200 Equalizer (don’t judge me, it was a gift)
To mount the amp, I cut a piece of Medium Density Fiberboard ($10 at home depot) and covered it with outdoor carpet ($3.12 ft) using glue and a couple staples. I then mounted the amp with the supplied screws and the 100A fuse ($30 @ car audio shop). I used 2 gauge wire for all the power connections ($60 for both blue and white – stuff is more expensive than I thought).
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/01.JPG
I mounted it on the left side of the boat under the console using L-brackets. The bottom ones go right into the floor and the top one went into the board that holds the rub rail (see next pic). If you use the rub rail, definitely pre-drill holes with a strong drill…that stuff is tough. Also, need to use some common sense when you do it, I suppose you could drill right through to the other side if you weren’t careful. On another note, be careful drilling into the MDF as it tends to crack if you aren’t careful or get too close to the edge. The amp installation was actually pretty easy. I pretty much copied other people’s forum posts. Since the deck was pushing the cabin speakers (not good if you have 6 speakers like I do, caused me some problems last summer with the deck going into protect mode), I just cut the speaker wire from the harness and ran the existing speaker wire straight into the amp. It is now pushing the cabin speakers and sub.
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/02.JPG
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/03.JPG
Next was the real pain of this whole project, the equalizer. I mounted mine under the dash on the left side. Took me a while to figure this one out. I wound up just using long L-brackets and drilling holes into the fiberglass under the console and secured the whole thing with very short bolts and nuts. I kinda had to pull the plastic apart from the fiberglass just enough to get the screws in. I wish I had a better picture, but there was really no way to get the camera up there now and I didn’t have it handy when I was working on it. Definitely cost me a bloody knuckle or two getting that thing in. Here is the finished product:
http://pages.suddenlink.net/kasquires22/images/04.JPG