2017 212 ls speaker wire

[Jeff L]

Not following you, why do you want to cut wire?

to attach to my amp

 

[Dave burke]

Got it. It’s pretty universal that speaker wires are gray and white for the front channels a purple and green for the rear. The negative wires have a black stripe. So you’re looking for a total of 8 wires.

do you have RCA outputs on the Head Unit (HU)? You’ll need RCA cables as well.

If you going to go with the factory wiring, the rear speakers seem like they’re wired in series so just make sure the amp is designed to handle an 8 ohm load. Also, you probably know this but a simple way to check if they’re in series is to disconnect one rear speaker and the other one on the same side will stop working.

 

[Jeff L]

ok thank you. Yes, the RCA are there (they have red/white caps on end). I ordered some already (male/male). I looked at the specs on the amp but don't see anything about that, so, since I'm not familiar I'm probably reading over it. I know plenty of people that have this speaker/amp set up, so I'm confident that it will be correct. I'll just be running the existing wire instead of new 14 ga wire. I think I'm set with parts, etc thanks to this forum (much thanks to @tdonoughue ) and my dealer.

 

[Dave burke]

Good luck. You’ve got a nice amp there so I’d double check if I were you. There’s lots of good info on the JL site and you can always call them.

 

[Dave burke]

Just went on the JL site. There’s nothing in the manual about running 8 ohm loads except if bridged (which means you're combining channels to get more power). See pic below.

So I’d email or call them if I were you. I just don’t know enough about what happens if you run an 8 ohm load. Its probably not a big deal but just in case...

Also, the manual says to use 4 gauge power wire. Is this what you’re doing?

 

[Jeff L]

Just went on the JL site. There’s nothing in the manual about running 8 ohm loads except if bridged (which means you're combining channels to get more power). See pic below.

So I’d email or call them if I were you. I just don’t know enough about what happens if you run an 8 ohm load. Its probably not a big deal but just in case...

Also, the manual says to use 4 gauge power wire. Is this what you’re doing?

View attachment 116476

yes sir, thank you. I did buy 4 ga wire and a 50 amp circuit breaker. Can you explain what you mean by 8 ohm?

 

[Dave burke]

Good stuff re the wires.

Regarding 8 ohms, it’s just the amount of resistance in the speaker line. Most car/marine speakers are designed for 4 ohm loads.

When you wire speakers in series you’re doubling up on the resistance so 2x4 or 8 ohms. If you wire in parallel you’re halving the resistance so 4/2 or 2 ohms. So series provides less power per speaker, parallel provides more.

You can see from the specs that your amp is rated for 4 or 2 ohms. Like I said, I saw nothing about 8 ohms. May not be a big deal. I just don’t know.

I appreciate this is all a lot of info. But there’s lots of good info on this forum and you can also google “wiring car speakers in series vs. parallel.” Lots of good info out there.

There’s one YouTube channel I’ve found very good and have used it a lot for audio stuff. It’s called Car Audio Fabrication.

 

[Jeff L]

speaker specs do rate it at 4 ohm (60 w). not sure if my set up is parallel or a series. once my head stops spinning I'll re-visit this lol

 

[Dave burke]

Lol, I hear you.

the way I figured it out was to disconnect one of the rear (swim platform) speakers and then see if another one stopped working. That will tell you for sure.

 

[JDRacing]

speaker specs do rate it at 4 ohm (60 w). not sure if my set up is parallel or a series. once my head stops spinning I'll re-visit this lol

Yes, you are definitely getting lots of info thrown at you.

I'm pretty certain that four of your speakers are wired in series and that you don't want to that wiring as is with your new amp. @Dave burke and I both have the same boats (212X) one year apart and ran into the same issues when adding amps, because of the series wiring. I suspect that @tdonoughue, with his boat being a couple years older, had either one speaker per channel (four speakers total) or parallel wiring on 2 sets of speakers (if he had more than four speakers), so he could use existing wiring.

You currently have 6 speakers and your head unit, like all of them do, has 4 channels of output: right front, left front, right rear, and left rear. That means two of your sets of speakers are on the same channels, wired in series--either on the front channels or on the rear channels You don't want that series wiring with the new amp.

You can figure out which pairs of speakers are wired in series like this: move the fader all the way forward. Are two speakers playing or four speakers playing? If two (right/left), then these speakers are each on their own channel. If four, then the two right speakers are in series, and the two left are in series. You can verify the series wiring by disconnecting one of the speakers. If the other speaker on the same side goes out too, they are in series, as @Dave burke noted. You will want to rewire those four speakers.

Then move the fader to the rear and repeat, to verify that you only have two speakers playing (if you had 4 playing with the fader to the front).

This process will tell you which speakers you will want to rewire (the four in series), and which are not in series (you can use the existing wiring for those speakers. You might be able to figure it out based on how the wires are labeled (whether they say "series" on them or not).

Jeff

 

[Jeff L]

@JDRacing thank you. Good explanation, I understand. Maybe b/c I took a short break from all of this. I truly believe my rear 4 speakers are wired together (same color wiring for each side). I just heard from my dealer and he confirmed this. He also told me I would not have any problems running my amp and speakers with this set up, he said the ohms won't matter with what I'm doing.

What would happen if I do run my rear speakers with the existing wire (series set up)?

 

[mark_m]

to attach to my amp

I would run new wire so if you sell your boat you can get back to stock.

 

[JDRacing]

Well, you have six channels on your new amp. If you run 4 of the speakers in series, you will only use two amp channels to do so. Your other two speakers will run on two other amp channels, and you will have two amp channels left open. Nothing wrong with two open channels.

However, the speaker sets run in series will be seeing double the load of the two speakers on their own channels, so the their output (volumes) will be significantly lower. You can make them equal using the gain controls on the amps, but it's not optimum. Overall the system will not be as able to play as loud, and you will not be taking full advantage of either the nice speakers you just bought, or the nice amp.

And as far as the amp is concerned, I don't know that it will hurt it by running an 8 ohm load when it is designed to see 4 ohms max per channel. Probably not, but again, you are mismatching the amp's design with reality.

Jeff

 

[Jeff L]

ok, it's starting to make sense, thank you!

 

[Jeff L]

Well, you have six channels on your new amp. If you run 4 of the speakers in series, you will only use two amp channels to do so. Your other two speakers will run on two other amp channels, and you will have two amp channels left open. Nothing wrong with two open channels.

However, the speaker sets run in series will be seeing double the load of the two speakers on their own channels, so the their output (volumes) will be significantly lower. You can make them equal using the gain controls on the amps, but it's not optimum. Overall the system will not be as able to play as loud, and you will not be taking full advantage of either the nice speakers you just bought, or the nice amp.

And as far as the amp is concerned, I don't know that it will hurt it by running an 8 ohm load when it is designed to see 4 ohms max per channel. Probably not, but again, you are mismatching the amp's design with reality.

Jeff

so how bad is running new wire? I'm not worried about the cost, just the time involved.

 

[JDRacing]

Not terribly time consuming. To do it neatly, maybe 4 hours. As was suggested, leave the original wiring in place (making sure the ends don't touch each other), use a fish of some kind to fish the new wires through (stiff solid core 10 gauge works well) and take your time. You can encase each new pair of wires in split loom, available in different sizes from your hardware store. And then zip tie it up out of the way and off the floor of your compartments, which will really neaten it up.

For now, you can put each speaker on its own channel-- 6 channels, 6 speakers. If you decide to add (for example), a bridged sub later to two of the channels, you can easily move the speaker wires which were on those channels to double up with another pair of speakers, and they will be in parallel, as the amp was designed to accept. Much better than series.

Jeff

 

[Jeff L]

Not terribly time consuming. To do it neatly, maybe 4 hours. As was suggested, leave the original wiring in place (making sure the ends don't touch each other), use a fish of some kind to fish the new wires through (stiff solid core 10 gauge works well) and take your time. You can encase each new pair of wires in split loom, available in different sizes from your hardware store. And then zip tie it up out of the way and off the floor of your compartments, which will really neaten it up.

For now, you can put each speaker on its own channel-- 6 channels, 6 speakers. If you decide to add (for example), a bridged sub later to two of the channels, you can easily move the speaker wires which were on those channels to double up with another pair of speakers, and they will be in parallel, as the amp was designed to accept. Much better than series.

Jeff

I understand, thank you sir! Now I have a decision to make....

 

[tdonoughue]

@JDRacing is right. Mine is an older boat. I had 4 speakers in 2 channels, so none were in series. All were wired directly. That made reusing the wire easy.

Were I you I would say least rewire the 4 back speakers so they are parallel or single (use all 6 amp channels) (which would mean you will need a separate amp for a sub). Even being lazy and cheap I would not do your existing wiring with the series. You won't be happy after all this work...

IMHO

 

[Jeff L]

@JDRacing is right. Mine is an older boat. I had 4 speakers in 2 channels, so none were in series. All were wired directly. That made reusing the wire easy.

Were I you I would say least rewire the 4 back speakers so they are parallel or single (use all 6 amp channels) (which would mean you will need a separate amp for a sub). Even being lazy and cheap I would not do your existing wiring with the series. You won't be happy after all this work...

IMHO

This is from my dealer;
The back speakers are parallel. The 4 in the back are tied together, the front 2 stand alone.
Then if you want, and it’s not needed, you can run separate wires to the very back speakers. Then all of the speakers can run 4 ohm stable. Otherwise, the front will be 4, and the rear will be 2.
They should be wired in parallel. If you want to check them, positive will be connected to positive, negative will be connected to negative
If they were in series, one speaker would have positive going to stereo, then the ground would connect to the other speakers positive, then in turn that speakers negative will be going to the stereo

 

[JDRacing]

Respectfully, I think your dealer is not correct on how these 212 boats were wired in 2017 and 2018. Note that the wires say "series" on them. Your harness looks just like mine did.

The easiest way to check whether it is series and parallel is simply to disconnect one wire from one of the speakers which are wired together. If the other speaker wired with it stops playing, it is in series. If the other speaker still plays, it is parallel.

Jeff