What amps for your tower?

What amps are you guys running to power your tower speakers? I know a lot of guys are just running the OEM set up which I believe is a Kicker amp.

What are you non-OEM guys running?

I've got the Fusion P-series pods that were blown out on E-Bay a few weeks back. The recommendation is 275w RMS per pod.. DAMN! That's a TON of power. I'm 100% sure that I will underpower these as I can't really afford to buy that much power..

What amps are you guys running? Is anyone running a non-marine grade amp on their set up successfully? I'm wondering if running 75 x 2 RMS @ 4 ohms is even WORTH buying.. I'm trying to avoid buying a seperate amp for my sub and towers. I was hoping to buy a 4 channel and use 2 channels for the tower and bridge one to my 12" sub but with the power recommendation on these Fusions, I'm thinking I may have to get a big 2 channel to power them and find a mono for my sub.. (Yuck - more $$, more wiring, more mess)

I wouldn't even bother with the 75x4 amp. I have the double barrel Monster cans with the Polk db650's running off a Rockford Fosgate Punch P400-2. I am running it at 2 ohms and it is pushing 200w to each "pod" (pair of speakers). It is pretty loud and you can hear it at 75 feet, but for the people in the boat, their ears are bleeding.

Jeff, that's funny I was about to post something very similair. I bought those Fusion Pheonix Series on the blowout as well and love em :-) How are you liking yours? I was thinking about buying a kicker zx 450.2 to run these. Found that Amp for $189 with a warranty brand new. That wouldn't be the 275Watts RMS that they SAY they can handle but it sems like I've read somewhere they were more like 225 RMS Speakers ????? At any rate, I can hear them 75' back now and have no where near that many watts running to them.

I think your probably on the right path of having to buy a Mono for the sub and then an amp for the Fusions. I think you would be much happier having the power these things deserve. I feel your pain though having to always throw out money. :-) I might as well just keep my wallet out. Have a good one man.


Chad

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Originally Posted by Jeff W

What amps are you guys running to power your tower speakers? I know a lot of guys are just running the OEM set up which I believe is a Kicker amp.

What are you non-OEM guys running?

I've got the Fusion P-series pods that were blown out on E-Bay a few weeks back. The recommendation is 275w RMS per pod.. DAMN! That's a TON of power. I'm 100% sure that I will underpower these as I can't really afford to buy that much power..

What amps are you guys running? Is anyone running a non-marine grade amp on their set up successfully? I'm wondering if running 75 x 2 RMS @ 4 ohms is even WORTH buying.. I'm trying to avoid buying a seperate amp for my sub and towers. I was hoping to buy a 4 channel and use 2 channels for the tower and bridge one to my 12" sub but with the power recommendation on these Fusions, I'm thinking I may have to get a big 2 channel to power them and find a mono for my sub.. (Yuck - more $$, more wiring, more mess)

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Yeah the 75x4 isn't close to enough unfortunately. 150 rms would be the lowest I'd even try. I have these speakers too and plan to pick up a bigger amp soon. I'll let you know what I find.

I run kicker non marine amps and get great performance. Marine grade is a rip off. The only thing on the boat that is marine grade is the wet sound tower speakers.

I run an 850.2 kicker for the wet sounds and a sub, to an alpine head unit. One channel comes from the sub out on the head and one comes from the pre out on the head unit.

I have my cabin speakers on an amp as well, and they are turned down to allow my sub to punch out well. For my towers I have a rotary volume knob that connects inline via RCA. That way I can run my sub and not have my tower speakers on, or in other words, while my sub is playing, I can control the volume to the tower speakers.

Setup works well for lack of a better option, or in my case lack of wanting to spend the extra dollas to buy a sub amp. The sub is playing near full range, but the head unit does a good job at limiting the frequencies that channel through the sub out.


Any marine grade amp will fry if it gets splashed, just the same as any non marine amp. If you want to make one that can sustain water you can take it apart and put a silicon coating on it yourself.

I used to run all marine grade stuff in my boat. I had 2 marine JL audio amps, marine sub, marine head-unit and speakers and had nothing but problems with them.

The sub I had was a Marine rockford fosgate 10" that was directly behind the drivers seat drilled into that small fiberglass section between the driver and the backrest for the seat behind the driver. The first one I had blew within 2 months and the next one blew within 1 1/2 months.

Since then they installed all NON-marine parts except for the tower speakers and speaker around the boat. Headunit, amp, and sub (that is in open air) are all non-marine and I have not had a problem since!! It has even rained on the non-marine sub, I was stressing about that though, and it still work perfectly.

Lesson learned - it is better to overpower your speakers than under power them. That seemed like backwards logic to me at first but that's what you're supposed to do...

I am running 4 Polk MM 6.5" tower speakers (2 Liquid Audio doubles) at 2ohm on a Kicker Zx350.2. The amp puts out 175watts to each set of doubles however the little tag on the amp certification said it is putting out 198 per channel. The speakers are rated for 100watts RMS each so you at least want to match that if not go over a little.

I should have done the same setup in my cabin but am running a Kicker ZX 350.4 to the 4 cabin speakers (also Polk MM 6.5") at 4ohm (okay, Polk says they are actually 2.7ohm) and I'm thinking they are underpowered. I am occasionally getting distortion at high volume on some songs because they are starving for more power, even with the high pass filters turned on. They are actually only getting about 65-70 watts each where they would be more happy at 100+.

I run a Kicker ZX 750.1 mono amp to a 12" Polk sub in a custom sealed box. Amp puts out right about 400 watts at 4ohm which is exactly what the RMS is for the sub. The Kicker amp also has a separate remote bass control knob mounted right by my steering wheel which is great for fine tuning. I may add a second 12" Polk on the other side of the cabin and split my 750.1 amp down to 2ohm. It would power both 12's just fine but probably rattle everything else loose on the boat and I'd lose a fair amount of storage from that second sub box! Still tempting though...

All the Polk MM speakers are marine certified but my Kicker amps are not. They are mounted about 6-8" off the floor though so if I do take on some water they will "hopefully" be high enough to avoid taking a bath.

I haven't had to worry yet about equalizers or in-line volume control because for now we all like it loud!

Overpowering your amps is the preferred method, you can always turn down the gain if it's too much. I run a Kicker ZX750.5 for the 6 Polk MoMo's and the sub as it has a dedicated Class D channel just for that. A Kicker ZX650.4 runs the 4 JBL 6x9's. I have more than enough clean power to drive them all.

What about high humidity areas for marine vs. non-marine. It is VERY humid in Minnesota in the summer time when it gets hot. I have heard that humidity damage is as much, if not more, of a concern than actually taking water over the bow and soaking them?

Anyone?

In high humidity regions i would go marine as everything internal is coated to prevent corrosion. I've seen amps soaked, even submerged and after drying still work but humidity attacks the components long term and will cause failure.

Hey Razz, just curious why you relocated your amps. Did you add a carpeted board to attach the amps to or were you just careful to get the screws in spots with backing plates?

I relocated them as the Kickers are much longer than what i had from the dealer. As the seat back is not big enough nor the the walkway panel i put them there. I actually used a piece of Alucabond which is 1/8 thin HDPE plastic sandwhiched between two 1/32 thick layers of aluminum. That i attached to the hull and carpeted. It is attached to the floor/hull reinforcement rib on the bottom and the rubrail backing strip at the top.