Installing Exile Tower Speakers with No Visible Speaker Wires
Seems like there are more and more people going with Exile tower speakers (and for good reason!) so I thought it would be helpful to explain how to do the install so that there are no visible speaker wires (other than around the tower pivot point on the port side). For those that don't know, the speaker wires on the Exile speaker pods come up thru the bottom clamp so you can route them inside the tower for a totally wire-free look.
For this write up, we are assuming that you are installing 4 Exile tower speakers on the rear tower tube and you will power them with a 2 channel amp (such as the Exile 1K Harpoon) which means you will run two pairs of 12 gauge speaker wires and wire two speakers in parallel to each channel. So you will run the speaker wire from the left channel to the port side speaker #1, then run a jumper wire from the port side speaker #1 to the port side speaker #2. Do the same for the right channel to starboard speakers 1 & 2.
So first you'll want to determine your speaker mounting locations and mark with masking tape the location of the speaker clamps. Now drill a 3/8" hole at the bottom of the tube along the centerline of the clamps. Note that you don't want to drill them directly under the tube but a little towards the stern of the boat so that the tower speakers will be aimed slightly upwards when the boat is level. This will ensure that the speakers are about parallel to the water when the boat is underway and in a slightly nose up position.
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We need to route the speaker wires from the front round tube to the rear round tube thru the center oval cross tube. This oval tube is closed off on both ends so we will need to drill holes in the inner round tube into the oval tube. So first drill a ½” hole in the front round tube horizontally directly in front of the center oval tube. Now push your drill bit thru until you make contact with the back of the front tube. Drill a second hole making sure you are perfectly horizontal so that you drill into the inside of the oval tube. http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/g...l/IMG_0733.jpg
Do the exact same thing from the back round tube, just under the tower tow pylon.
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When done, you would have drilled four holes all in a straight line and you can look from the front or the back hole and can see all the way thru the first two holes, thru the oval tube, and thru the two holes on the other end. Make sense?
The inside hole in the front tube (the one that leads into the oval crosstube) now needs to be enlarged because you will be trying to pull two pairs of speaker wire thru them at a 90 degree angle and I found this impossible to do thru the 1/2" inner hole. I was using pretty thick wire with a real tacky outside surface so I am sure that was part of the problem. If you are using smaller wire (thinner insulation) with a slippery outside coating, you may not need to do this. So what I did was to take a ¼” diameter round file, stuck it in thru the front hole and using an in an out motion, enlarged the inner hole to about a 1” wide rectangle (with rounded corners). Using a new file, this does not take too long as it cuts thru the aluminum fairly easily. Took me about 10 minutes to enlarge the hole. Be careful to only enlarge the inner hole, NOT the outer hole. You will eventually plug the outer hole with a shiny round metal plug so it’s important that the outer hole remain round.
Now pull two pairs of weedeater wire of different colors (one for each pair of wires) from the hole at the pivot point to the ½” hole in the front tube. I use metal fish tape which works great. Just tape the weedeater wire to it and push it thru.
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Installing Exile Tower Speakers with No Visible Speaker Wires
A vacuum cleaner over the hole will help guide a pull string thru too.
