2020 212S - JL Audio Setup

[Mitya]

Just pulled the radio out today to see what's in there and found all the RCA's intact - no need to buy a harness - Yamaha must be listening. Will be installing the JL Audio MX500/4 Monday to run all six Polk speakers, cockpit and bow on channels 1/2 in parallel, and the rears on ch 3/4. This will allow me to isolate the swim platform while moving to turn them off, and the amp has plenty of power to run 6 speakers. The Connext screen has fade control so should be able to use it directly from the joystick. Radio pulled out below:
View attachment 124333

How are you routing the rcas from the swim platform? I haven't opened it up to check yet, but it seems like it will be a tight squeeze.

 

[Mitya]

Just pulled the radio out today to see what's in there and found all the RCA's intact - no need to buy a harness - Yamaha must be listening. Will be installing the JL Audio MX500/4 Monday to run all six Polk speakers, cockpit and bow on channels 1/2 in parallel, and the rears on ch 3/4. This will allow me to isolate the swim platform while moving to turn them off, and the amp has plenty of power to run 6 speakers. The Connext screen has fade control so should be able to use it directly from the joystick. Radio pulled out below:
View attachment 124333

You got lucky, what model fusion is yours? Mine is ma-ra70nsx and have no rca outputs

 

[212s]

How are you routing the rcas from the swim platform? I haven't opened it up to check yet, but it seems like it will be a tight squeeze.

It was a tight squeeze, but I took out the rear speaker near the radio, reached in and my wife managed to grab one end, the rest was fairly easy, just time consuming. Ran all new speaker wires as the stock harness has the rears and cockpit in series, and the bow direct. Put the bow and cockpit in parallel, and the rear on their own channel. I can fade out the rears from the Connext now. With the extra power, the Polks sound great. Kept the 55Hz filter on the radio and let the amp do the rest but set the HP mode to the lowest at about 35Hz. Sounds great.

 

[212s]

You got lucky, what model fusion is yours? Mine is ma-ra70nsx and have no rca outputs

Ah no way, Yamaha must have changed it mid-season. Mine was built in Feb 2020 with the same model.

 

[Bssmith1220]

You got lucky, what model fusion is yours? Mine is ma-ra70nsx and have no rca outputsView attachment 124401

This is what mine looks like. No rca outputs. What harness is available to fix this? I’m about to install an amp and I’m hoping I don’t have to cut anything.

 

[Milwmarc]

Lot of good info here. Installed probably 20 car stereo's or so and 4 to 5 boats..and have a few threads here on my old ar230. Just bought a 2019 212 limited s and first thing I have to tackle is this same stereo project. We've had VERY good luck with Skar Audio Tower's, I tore them off my old boat and reinstalling on the new boat. A few questions I didn't see answers to for the Fusion RA 70 whatever. First I bought the adapter with zone 1 and 2 etc to be put on. I am going to mount my amps under the steering wheel on starboard that I get in 4.x8 sheets and cut to size. I'll take pictures throughout the project but need some help to do some ordering online to get the parts here for install.

First time is my number one enemy. I think I'm gonna tackle this project myself but I may have an installer do it depending on some input here. So the questions.

Let me start with I really just want to run RCA zone 2 to an amp and power up to additional tower speakers.
but

Zone 1 and zone 2. If I run RCA's off just zone 2 to an amp, and than 2 two tower speakers off the amp. If I leave everything else stock...will the fusion allow me to run zone 1 for the boat speakers and zone 2 off the towers? right now the zoning of the original wiring on my 212 is zone one controls the cockpit and zone 2 controls the 2 speakers on the the swim deck. If I run the new RCA plug adapter and just run rca's out from zone 2 to the amp to the tower speakers will zone one control all 6 boat speakers?

Question 2, if since I'm running RCA's off zone 2 I now NEED to run rca's to zone 1. than that means another amp to control the 6 speakers in original boat. Going to do what many have said and just try to power up the polks without replacement. I REALLY don't want to run new wire to each of the 6 speakers from an amp. but if I have to....can I run speedwire (where you have 12 wires in one cable) from the amp that will power the 6 speakers BACK to the original speaker wires and just do all my final connections there and use the existing speaker wire. OR should I run new speaker wire to all 6 speakers.

***For this year I really just want to get the 2 tower's up run off an amp and leave all 6 factory speakers alone but the fusion website is pretty useless to tell me if I can run RCA's just from back of head unit harness zone 2, to an amp and than amp to the 2 tower speakers.

Your help to all is greatly appreciated.

 

[212s]

This is why I re-wired all of the speakers. My boat came wired with zone 1 as the bow and zone 2 as the cockpit and stern in series, kinda backwards to your stock setup. The series config really killed the sound and volume in the cockpit while the bow was louder and more full sounding. Once I installed the amp, I wired it with zone 1 as the cockpit & bow speakers in parallel since the JL amp can handle 2 ohm loads, and zone 2 just for the stern. I tuned the amp to pump about 60w per speaker to the boat, and 50w each to the speakers on the swim platform. Works and sounds great.

You can just amp the towers for now using the zone 2 set of RCA's and leave the stock speaker wiring alone. You won't be able to use the stock wiring and separate the zones on a new amp due to how it's wired unless you don't care about the series wiring killing the output. But you will be able to get the tower speakers running of an amp and all 6 stock speakers working for now.