There are ways to upgrade your stereo system that might be easier... such as taking it to your dealer or stereo shop and letting them have at it - maybe even a slampak... But if you're like me - you don't mind getting your hands dirty and saving a buck is nice too.
I went about this stereo upgrade in 3 steps basically - but since I ordered all the gear at the same time I was committed to going all the way. You don't have to go all the way, or you could take these steps as your budget permits. Each step brings new life to the stereo and are all quite worth while. Of course there is no limit to what you can do, and I'm no stereo freak so my goals were somewhat limited to upgrading the existing system.
First step was to swap out the original 6.5" coax speakers. I liked the look of the polk audio speakers and they got a great review online so I got the
MM651UM speakers. From amazon you're about $300 for 2 pair. They're an interesting design as they're situated like a coaxial speaker but they're not a traditional coaxial. The tweeters are mounted in the grille separated from the main cone.
Take your time drilling the holes for these speakers as the grilles are timed by the mounting holes. The rears are mounted in fiberglass and so long as you're careful not to strip the holes, and don't drill the holes too large you should be fine screwing into the fiberglass... but up front the speakers are mounted into thin plastic, I used the clip on nuts that came with the speakers. You'll have to enlarge the original opening a little to use those clip on nuts. I used a dremel tool and it was quick and easy to just cut out a little material at each nut. On deck power alone these speakers are a nice upgrade from the stockers. They make more bass for sure, and fill in the midrange and highs nicely. They may be a little on the bright side, but that's ok depending on where you're seated. You could stop here (but I wouldn't).
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The next step was to install the amplifier. I didn't put a ton of thought into this - I knew I wanted something marine rated to stand up to the wet environment and stuck to the polk audio theme. I got the
Polk Audio PA D5000.5 (about $300 on amazon). It has a basic equalizer or filters built in, and a remote subwoofer level dial. I turned on the HPF for both fronts and rears since the 6.5" speakers don't claim frequency response below 45hz anyhow (and I was installing a sub as well). 20 feet of power cable was nearly perfect to run from the battery compartment, across the engine bay and up the starboard side of the boat. I secured the power cable with zip ties and made sure that previously installed zip ties were in no position to abrade or cut into the power cable insulation, also make sure the engine hatch latch won't reach your wiring. If you're more concerned you could wrap the power cable in split loom. I like to prevent chafing from occurring in the first place - if it can't move it shouldn't chafe. For the power cable I bought 2 amplifier installation kits. This worked out to be less than buying 4 gauge wire from west marine at $3.00 / foot, and the install kits included fuses and ring terminals.
PLANET AUDIO 4 Gauge Amplifier Installation Kit (4GPK) $30 each at Frys These kits have 20 feet of 4 gauge in red, and 3 feet in grey, you can use that to connect to fuses or a circuit breaker. I used a 100 amp waterproof circuit breaker in the battery compartment from west marine.
285 Series, Thermal Circuit Breaker, 100A I shrink wrapped the ends of the red cable in black to designate the ground wire.
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From tap plastics I had a piece of 1/2" thick white starboard material cut to 27" x 13". This size allowed me to tie into both sides and the bottom of the helm electronics box. I mounted (5) 10-24 studs to the fiberglass and drilled slightly larger holes in the starboard panel to it could easily slip on and off the studs for easy install and removal. It's held in place with nylocs and washers. It's hella stout, and can be removed in a few seconds. I put in an access port to the diagnostics plugs and holes for the cabling for a neat and simple install. All the holes though the mounting panel are chamfered as to not to cut into the wiring. Again you can split loom this if you like. To make wiring the speakers simple I used a
Metra 70-7303 wiring harness. About $6 from amazon. I used a bandsaw to cut the unused half off the speaker wire plug and it's just what the doctor ordered to connect to the boat's speaker wiring harness. The blue wire coming out of the Polk head unit (as is mentioned in the polk's manual) is the amplifier trigger lead so extend and connect this to the amp and everything will still power off when you turn off the main battery switch even though the amp's circuit breaker is tied directly to the house battery. If you close off the bottom of the helm's electronics/cabling opening like I did - you will want to re-route the cup holder's drain through the steering cable opening. Secure this hose the best you can - you don't want water dribbling directly into your electronics. (I'll revisit all the cup holders someday so they don't dribble into the boat at all.) Before attaching wires to the amp in the screw down terminals I soldered all the wire ends with some non-acid flux and solder. If you screw down directly on high strand wire you'll end up cutting off a bunch of strands - that's messy.
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Now that the amp is installed the speakers really (really) come to life. The bass is much stronger and the speakers can finally really sing they way they were intended. This is a really big step in sonic performanice. If you were lazy you could quit here, but if you want it to really sound great you'll move on to installing the sub of course.
Keeping in theme I got the
Polk Audio AA3106-A MM1040UM 10-Inch
subwoofer. This was about $180 on Amazon with the grille. I'm not a professional stereo installer and cutting that big hole for the sub really gnawed at me for a few days. I considered hiring a pro to do it but if I had to haul the boat in that would be a hassle so I continued on my own. Originally I wanted to put the sub under the helm area cup holders in the gunwale. There are some 10" subs that are a lower profile that would fit in there but this one wouldn't. Or at least I wasn't brave enough to try, and I didn't want to mount it out from the wall. I believe it's 4-5/8" deep with top mounting and it looked like I had almost exactly that in the wall. I chose to put it just forward of the yamaha supplied cooler instead. It sounds good there and there aren't any unwanted vibrations in that area even with the cooler in place. I used some clear vinyl graphics transfer tape 16" wide to cover the installation area. (most people just use blue painters tape). The polk subwoofer's grille will look funny if it's not mounted nice and level so that was important to me. I set the bench level with the trailer tongue jack, then I could use the level to set the speaker level. I had tap plastics cut me a speaker ring from black starboard 3/4" thick. It's about 1" wide. Starboard works like wood, drills eassily, cuts easily and won't rot of course. I centered the ring on the speaker and used a centering punch to mark all the mounting holes then drilled them on a drill press. I predrilled them 1/8" for my screws. To get the ring level, I used a centering punch to mark the top hole location on the boat and screwed the ring to the boat from the top hole. I partially screwed 2 screws into the 3 and 9 o'clock positions of the ring to check level again. Then I used the centering punch to mark the bottom hole location and drilled it - and secured it with another screw. I then continued all around the ring with the centering punch and marked then drilled all the necessary mounting holes.
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It's hard to tell in the photo but all this work is done on that 16" wide clear tape. I then traced the inner circle of the ring onto the boat with a sharpie and had my cut line. Now the moment of truth - time to cut that hole. It turned out to be less dramatic than I had envisioned. I drilled a few pilot holes around the perimeter of the cut out and then got out my jig saw. I put it on a small orbit and speed 5 out of 6 and used a fiberglass cutting blade. I set up my shop vac with some tape to hold the hose in place inside the storage compartment right near the cutting area. This really made the clean up a breeze. I also took out the main cockpit carpet as well. The jig saw cut the hole quite nicely and all that was left was to screw in the speaker with it's starboard backing ring. The weight of this speaker and how violently it's servo action must work to do it's job - I wouldn't install this speaker without a sturdy - thick ring with good stainless sheet metal screws or some thru-bolts with nuts. I used #8 stainless screws with square drive truss heads. They fit perfectly into the subwoofer mounting ring. I also like square drive screws since they don't slip. Last thing you want to do is slip and poke your screw driver through your new speaker. I used 4 of those and 4 of the supplied screws to attach the grille. Be cautious to torque the screws down evenly to compress the gasket behind the speaker mounting ring. Many of you don't like the supplied cooler - but as of yet, I'm making good use of it and as you can see this location doesn't interfere with operation of the cooler. This install took me about 10 hours, and I had to contort into some tight places to secure all the wiring but I'm happy with the install and it sounds really fantastic. The total bill with speakers, amp, wiring, starboard, hardware, etc.. $1015. That was considerably less than the slampak, and nothing about this install was really "difficult" other than getting contorted into the tight spaces. I did remove the door frame to the helm storage area to make it easier to get in and out of there - but the exposed fiberglass edges are sharp - so be careful.
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UPDATE:
After runing the Polk sub for a while, It got on my nerves. It was a little confusing for a while, it would sound killer, then on another song it would sound weird.. Anyhow I got to the bottom of it - it's not really an Infinite Baffle compatible sub like Crutchfield advertised. I could have lived with it but I don't like 1/2 Ass. So I ordered the JL Audio IB sub and got it in. In the meantime I found out that Polk now has a real Infinite Baffle subwoofer. I would have liked to try that as the mounting holes may have been all the same but as it were - the 9 and 3 o'clock screw holes matched up perfectly between the Polk and the JL and this saved a lot of trouble mounting the new speaker. As many have reported - the JL speaker does a killer job.
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