A Little Sound System Help

sidewayz · Newbie Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 19 City: Des Moines

So this season my wife and I decided to redo our ol’ 87 bayliners interior and upgrade the sound system so that the boat matchs the new monster tower....

heres my beater.....

So a buddy of mine knew I was looking for a "cheap" sub setup and offered to sell me his 1 year old Kicker setup to me at a decent price....Now I was already going to slap in car speakers into some DIY Cans and then put a cheap car amp in and run an entry level car sub...but obviously putting in a $400 sub requires some greater thought...I am concerning about moisture...so I probably would take the box and spray it with bed liner or something and use some caulking to seal the sub in the box... so I am pretty cool with that I think....what do you guys think? I don’t want to damage the sub...

and then how do you guys suggest mounting the amp?

I thought about mounting it in the driest place in the boat right under the stereo and just running some speaker wire (5 ft or so) to the sub but would that really deliver the power and sound quality to the speaker the same as a shorter wire? would it be significant enough to notice sound quality?.....or is having a car amp in a boat just a bad idea all together?

nauty_tique · Newbie Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 38 City: Winston Salem

Where are you placing the speaker box? unless it's exposed to the elements any normal speaker box will be fine, may just want to add some runners or something to the bottom to keep it off the floor(dry) your car amp will be fine and i would do just as you say with mounting it, it will of course get pretty warm and any moisture will be deadly to it. the 5 ft or so of wire wont be a noticeable issue, but i would use a decent guage speaker wire. Hope this helps,

Cyclonecj · Soul Rider Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 338 City: Atlanta

Coat the box inside and out with epoxy resin. Mount the amp to a vertical bulkhead or to the hull. You can use liquid nails to glue blocks of MDF to the hull which you can then drive screws in to hold the amp. I mounted my amp to a cutting board from Home Depot, covered the board in carpet. Keep the amp off the floor of the boat, it'll get wet and croak.

rocko wakeboarder · Criminal Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 91 City: Rockingham

mount the amp to the back of the speaker box

dyldebus · Newbie Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 13 City: Tempe

I actually don't know anyone that uses marine anything. Everyone seems to go with car audio you just have to be smart about it. If the box is carpeted, remove it and brush on a coat of fiberglass resin (home depot). You don't need to add any material to it, the resin will completely waterproof the MDF. Like the other guy said doing the inside as well definitely won't hurt anything. You can put the carpet back on with 3M spray. Running a 5' wire from your amp will be fine. Just don't run walmart ultra tiny wires to it. It's always better to get it closer but you seriously won't be able to tell. Be smart and get that amp as high as possible.

Don't forget to waterproof that box, even the moisture in your compartments from wet jackets can warp MDF it's very sensative to water.

-Dylan

tmbrown · Outlaw Joined: 03 Jul 2004 Posts: 218 City: East Roseville

Personally, I attached a carpeted board under the passenger dash-board for my amps... positioned just right where the amps clear the back of the glove box. one's a clarion marine, one's a generic automotive amp... for mounting, I drilled holes out in-line with what's holding the bow-cusion there, and basically threaded on to the threads left on those bolts. Since they weren't long enough, I used some special nuts that could grab the board, but put the threads inside the hold I drilled (hard to picture without seeing it).

Also note - of course, you wire these amp up different than a car - you gotta run the power to the battery... something cool I found was duplex wire @ west marine (2 wires in one sheath) at any guage necessary... that's what I used all the way back to the rear.