Good deal on Kicker LED speakers? Plus Install help!!

[Miitch]

It's honestly a pretty quick install. The speakers that I swapped out had holes that all lined up nicely with the Kickers. The most time-consuming part was honestly adding the terminal ends to the existing wires that I had in the boat in order to connect to the Kickers.

The head unit took some wiring to get the harness connected up, but overall all four speakers and the head unit plus amp was maybe an hour or so of work (I have installed a lot of car audio stuff, so it was pretty quick for me, but realistically it shouldn't take long at all for you).

Never wired speakers to an amp before. I’ve been doing some hard reading on this site and feel confident(ish). Might be coming back here when I run into problems

 

[Theryan]

Never wired speakers to an amp before. I’ve been doing some hard reading on this site and feel confident(ish). Might be coming back here when I run into problems

Depending on what you get it's pretty straightforward. The little mini amp I have you just connect the preouts from the head unit to the amp, and the speakers are connected to the head unit via the harness. I don't have the speakers wired directly to the amp, at all, as there isn't even an option for that.

 

[Ronnie]

The kicker led controller should only cost around $30. The rx/tx is a small inline dongle (about the size of a pen cap).

 

[Crob83]

I Will only be running the 4 Kicker cockpit speakers with the amp. No tower speakers though, however in the future, i was looking at the 4" kicker tower speakers. Run for about $400-600? are these the ones you have? How do they sound with no tower speakers? Loud enough to be heard off the back of the boat?

I got mine with the cans included for $280 off of creative audio.com

 

[Miitch]

I got mine with the cans included for $280 off of creative audio.com

Are you talking about tower speakers? that's really cheap... Here's hoping they ship internationally...

 

[Crob83]

Are you talking about tower speakers? that's really cheap... Here's hoping they ship internationally...

Ya I searched around for weeks, and I was looking for the black cans with the white grill speakers. Found just that for $280, it was a great deal.

 

[Miitch]

Ya I searched around for weeks, and I was looking for the black cans with the white grill speakers. Found just that for $280, it was a great deal.

I just checked them out and holy... They are cheap... I went to creativeaudio. com which apparently is just a website selling the domain name "creativeaudio. com". $250,000 for anybody that wants to buy that domain.

Creativeaudio. NET however, different story LOL speaker heaven. I will have to save that website for when i get the towers. Thanks!! Love that colour scheme on your 195. not one bad angle on that thing

 

[Peelz]

I like this idea of wiring the LEDs to the existing interior light switch..Did you find any troubles when doing this? Like running out of wire, or running out of room?

none. all it is is a small led behind the grille. Actually, I used spare speaker wire to run from the lights to the switch

 

[Inthrustwetrust]

I think I might have to invest in a better wiring/battery set up.. seems to be the safer option. no point having a good sound system if it drains the battery and doesn’t work half the time. Bring Out Another Thousand...

Well you already have two batteries. Run with what you got for now. I just looked quickly on amazon, boat battery switches are pretty cheap. I think you can separate your batteries into a house and starter battery for $75 give or take. Power to to the engines on your starter battery, everything else on the house.

Good battery tenders are anywhere from $100 on up.
Most expensive thing is a new upgraded battery. That can wait, test out what you got, I think that will work. I would just be concerned in your current set up of getting stranded if you drain both bats to the point they won’t turn the engine over. I’m honestly not the best guy to answer if planned set up will do that, but better to be safe than sorry.

 

[Miitch]

So two months later and I’m finally starting the install.. boat was in the shop for all of August. Typical sea doo decided to drink the whole lake.

Anyway, I have a question regarding the LED wiring. I purchased the wet sounds clone for the LED controller (pictured below) and the kicker speakers have these plugs with all the wires attached to them (pictured below). I’m assuming it would just be easier to cut the plug off and have the wires exposed.

My question is, would it make sense to run 4 wires (RGB and positive) around the boat and then just splice each speaker RGB cable to this? Then I would have all the speakers connected to their own RGB wire which would go into the LED controller? I’ll try my best to sketch my thoughts below.

 

[Theryan]

If I were going to do this and run the wiring, I would run one long length to each color channel on one of the speakers, then use positaps to splice into them at each speaker.

 

[Ronnie]

I used a speaker hub, that is, 4 output wires from the controller (one bank only) to the hub and separate lines to each speaker from the hub. See the pic. The hub is under the covered cable bundle coming out of the small second amp from the left. My controller is mounted at the helm. This makes adding, removing and trouble shooting a lot easier and cleaner.

FYI my kicker speakers with leds didn’t not come with leads installed in a connector.

 

[Miitch]

@Ronnie holy cow that’s one clean set up I’m just trying to keep this install simple solely due to the fact that I know I’m a year I’ll be upgrading to a bigger boat . Are you using the same wet sounds clone controller? If I wire it according to my “schematic” above, will I have issues?

 

[Miitch]

@Theryan i think those are a better idea than soldering in the boat.. I was looking for any excuse I could find to avoid soldering in the boat.

 

[Ronnie]

If you wire per your diagram it should work fine. I have he same imitation controller and mounted it at the helm to allow me to plug the synch cable into both the aux input and For the head unit as well as the led controller.

 

[yjander]

If you wire per your diagram it should work fine. I have he same imitation controller and mounted it at the helm to allow me to plug the synch cable into both the aux input and For the head unit as well as the led controller.

Do you get hissing sounds from your controller? I have the wetsounds one and when using the music sync 3.5mm jack the lights hiss in the speakers. The controller and amp share the same ground.

 

[Ronnie]

I used to get a hissing sound but only when I tired to use the rca signal coming out of the amp which powers my sub woofer to send lows to the controller only. When using my phone I have to reduce the volume at the phone as well as play with the controller knob to eliminate the hissing.

 

[yjander]

I used to get a hissing sound but only when I tired to use the rca signal coming out of the amp which powers my sub woofer to send lows to the controller only. When using my phone I have to reduce the volume at the phone as well as play with the controller knob to eliminate the hissing.

ok thanks for the info. I can't get the controller knob to actually do anything to help with the sensitivity. This is a wetsounds controller, which i'm not impressed with. I guess I need to reach out to crutchfield to see what their stance is on it.

 

[Ronnie]

ok thanks for the info. I can't get the controller knob to actually do anything to help with the sensitivity. This is a wetsounds controller, which i'm not impressed with. I guess I need to reach out to crutchfield to see what their stance is on it.

I recommend that you turn the knob down on the controller as well the volume on the phone and build your way up from there.

 

[yjander]

I recommend that you turn the knob down on the controller as well the volume on the phone and build your way up from there.

I have the controller connected via a Y connector coming off of the pre-amp output on my Fusion head unit. My amp does not have an output on it, so I had to Y off of the pre-amp output on the HU.