Do I have to buy a marine stereo?

[n2ostroker]

Re: Do I have to buy a marine stereo?

I do mobile electronics for a living. If you want a really nice stereo and not take any chances buy a marine and get an enclosure for it. If you just want a stereo buy good name brand(sony, pioneer, apine, kenwood) and you'll be fine. As I tell everyone don't go super cheap or thats what you'll get. Start in the $120-up range and you'll be fine. The marine stereos have an expoxy coated board and usually have rubber coated exposed leads inside. Marine speakers are the same, rubber coated tensil leads, coated spiders, sealed magnets/voicecoils.

I actually had a customer/friend come in last month I that I put in an Alpine auto cd player 6yrs ago and it was working just fine. He's out in this boat every weekend in the summer and has 3 kids.

 

[jennis9]

Re: Do I have to buy a marine stereo?

the jport hooks into the harness of the back of the radio and has a mountable jack that you plug directly into the ipod and the jack. We love ours since we have the gimball mount and never have to open the case toi change tunes.

we can get pandora too from the iphone... love the jport.

 

[Begester]

Re: Do I have to buy a marine stereo?

Another way we get an "ipod jack" is by using one of those tapes that has a wire connected to the end of it with a standard plug. It looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Macally-PodTa...6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1245425643&sr=1-2

I think they were originally meant to hook up discman CD players to cars that only had tape decks and it works great. Also can hook up my Blackberry to it and stream the Pandorra radio stations over the boat speakers, which is really cool. Its funny because my boat is 20 years old and still has the factory head unit!

 

[Phoenixfirewalker]

Re: Do I have to buy a marine stereo?

1. Dont buy a marine radio
2. If way to concerned get a splash guard for it
3. you can buy an AM/FM/ Stereo/ CD-MP3-WMA / Ipod input jack and remote control, all for $89
and in fresh water you'll get more than 3 yrs worth of use.
with proper care and no splashes. if it does get wet disconect and dont use it for a week. most times it works like a charm !