2015 242 Limited S Audio Upgrade, Amp up stock tweeters?

[n8dogger32]

I searched through a bunch of threads and didn't see anything specific to my question but just purchased a Wet Sounds HTX-4. Should I amp up the tweeters or just leave them as the only speakers on the stock head unit.

Channel 1: Swim Deck Left + Rear Left in parallel
Channel 2: Swim Deck Right + Rear Right in parallel
Channel 3: Bow left
Channel 4: Bow Right

1)Or could I parallel the bow speakers with the tweeters?

2)Will the tweeters get damaged by being amp'd?

3)If I can hook them up to the amp, since I'll be using a the high pass filter on the amp do I still go through the crossovers under the cockpit seats?

 

[PhatPat]

That's a beast of an amp! Nice.
My suggestions:
1. Parallel the tweeters with the bow speakers.
2. The "filters" tied to the tweeters look to be a cap and an L-pad, so they are designed as a crossover and to match the volume level and power handling of the other speakers. So, I don't think you would damage the tweeters.
3. Given the above, I would leave those filters in place.

I hooked up an amp in the locker behind the helm using the stock wiring - I actually bought a spare part wiring harness and chopped that up to hook into the factory speaker wiring harness. On my boat (2013 242 LTD S) the speakers you mentioned were all wired in parallel and I left it that way. Sounds good. I haven't cooked the tweeter yet but I haven't pushed it.

Agreed that the bow + tweeters is a weird combo, but the tweeters fit nicely in the tower and let you hear the radio well while underway. In parallel with the full-range bow speakers you are basically sending all the power (in your case 100W into 4 ohm) to the bow speaker at lower frequencies and then splitting the power (in your case 150W into 2 ohm) between the tweeter and bow speaker at higher frequencies. So I would be worried about sending too much low frequency power to the bow speakers versus burning up the tweeter. I have the gain on that channel turned down on my amp to compensate.

Does your boat have the Polk db651s as the 6 other speakers? They are rated at 60W and I think sound really good when amped. I haven't found any info on the tweeters so I don't know what their specs are.

If you are actually going to run new wires for everything, running the tweeters off the head unit is another option. You would have to play with the line out levels and gains on the amps to get everything to match up volume-wise but then you don't have to worry about that weird high/low frequency parallel option.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your sound upgrade! These boats really should just come with amps from the factory.

 

[n8dogger32]

That's a beast of an amp! Nice.
My suggestions:
1. Parallel the tweeters with the bow speakers.
2. The "filters" tied to the tweeters look to be a cap and an L-pad, so they are designed as a crossover and to match the volume level and power handling of the other speakers. So, I don't think you would damage the tweeters.
3. Given the above, I would leave those filters in place.

I hooked up an amp in the locker behind the helm using the stock wiring - I actually bought a spare part wiring harness and chopped that up to hook into the factory speaker wiring harness. On my boat (2013 242 LTD S) the speakers you mentioned were all wired in parallel and I left it that way. Sounds good. I haven't cooked the tweeter yet but I haven't pushed it.

Agreed that the bow + tweeters is a weird combo, but the tweeters fit nicely in the tower and let you hear the radio well while underway. In parallel with the full-range bow speakers you are basically sending all the power (in your case 100W into 4 ohm) to the bow speaker at lower frequencies and then splitting the power (in your case 150W into 2 ohm) between the tweeter and bow speaker at higher frequencies. So I would be worried about sending too much low frequency power to the bow speakers versus burning up the tweeter. I have the gain on that channel turned down on my amp to compensate.

Does your boat have the Polk db651s as the 6 other speakers? They are rated at 60W and I think sound really good when amped. I haven't found any info on the tweeters so I don't know what their specs are.

If you are actually going to run new wires for everything, running the tweeters off the head unit is another option. You would have to play with the line out levels and gains on the amps to get everything to match up volume-wise but then you don't have to worry about that weird high/low frequency parallel option.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your sound upgrade! These boats really should just come with amps from the factory.

Wow thanks for your input. The rest of the speakers are db651 but I just got my 1st pair of kicker KM654L. My kids (and myself will enjoy the light show). I will continue to phase the 651s out over time. I am indeed running new wire so I may just leave the tweeters alone at first and see how everything sounds. Getting wire to the crossovers under the rear seats is fairly easy if i want to wire those up down the road. I don't know where the bow and tweeters are actually wired together. I'm assuming somewhere in the massive harness along the starboard wall so i'm think i wont mess with purple, gray, white and green wires under the helm and just leave the old wire in the bow ziptied somewhere. I hope that makes sense but I dont want to go cutting wires and chop off the tweeters.

 

[PhatPat]

Sounds like a good plan! Enjoy.
And if you like a specific color of LED light I suggest changing out your courtesy lights inside the boat with colored LED lights - they make wedge base LED bulbs in different colors. Mine are now blue.

 

[n8dogger32]

@PhatPat a little followup. The bow speakers sound WAY better. I spent most of yesterday redoing my "amp board" and running RGB lighting for future expansion so I don't have to do that again in the future. Some fun I had was soldering in a splice for the stbd cockpit and stbd deck speakers to be in parallel. The bugs were starting to come out at dusk so I almost just went the wire nut route .

Day 1: Redo Amp board, wire bow speakers to channel 1 + 2 and run RGB, install new stbd cockpit speaker and wire stbd cockpit + stbd stern and run RGB to speakers.
Hopefully I can knock the rest out on day 2 to include install new port cockpit speaker and wire port cockpit and stern in parallel and RGB. Also hopefully a much shorter day

 

[PhatPat]

Oh it's too pretty! Very nice amp board - where in the boat does it go? And good call on the soldering - wire nuts are for losers!! ;-)
I went for a ride this morning and turned the radio up to ear-bleed levels for a while. No sign of faltering from the tweeters. I also unplugged the tower and listened that way for a while - I can hear the cockpit speakers while underway but I missed having the tweeters over my head. I basically keep my satellite radio on Hair Nation the whole time and all those tasty guitar licks just aren't the same without the tower tweeters. Don't leave them hanging, I'm just sayin'...
Those lights look pretty sweet on the speaker. I may have to do that when the kids are older and I can actually take the boat out at night.

 

[n8dogger32]

Thanks!. I don't love the plywood but that's what we had laying around. Board goes under the helm, I'll attach a before shot of how it was mounted....Im going to run out of speaker wire before I get to the tweeters but after hearing the bow speakers ampd I could definitely see the tweeters getting missed running from stock.