Stereo and speakers cut out

[chad4577]

I have a 22' pontoon boat that is about 10 years old. The old radio seemed to short out when I turned the volume up. So I went out and bought a brand new Alpine CD player. The boat already had Alpine speakers in it, they were 3 years old. I started wiring the system up and when I wired the 3rd and 4th speaker, it would cut out again. When I only connect 2 speakers, it's fine. I have notice some other probelms with the fuse block holder and it may all be connected. The fuse block holder seems to have a short in it. Every so often I loose power to items and when I wiggly a fuse, they come back on.<br /><br />Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Boatin Bob]

Re: Stereo and speakers cut out

Does it cut out if you just wire in the 3rd or 4th one at a time, can you narrow it down just to one speaker? If so then that speaker may be shorted or the wiring to it. Are the speakers matched to the stereo, typically car stereos and speakers are 4 ohm but?? Is this new stereo a 4 channel with left and right front and rear and are you using all 4? I would probably replace that fuse block as well.

 

[byacey]

Re: Stereo and speakers cut out

If it has bridge type outputs (and most nowadays do) - if one of your speaker lines is shorted to ground, it could exhibit this problem; as well as a bad output Integrated circuit could do this as well. Have you tried connecting speaker 3 and 4 while leaving 1 and 2 disconnected? does it still cut out? Make sure you have a nice heavy 14 guage minimum wire for the power supply + and ground lead. I have seen output IC's go into oscillation because the resistance of the power supply lead was too high, and then they cut out due to internal protection circuitry.

 

[Bsturkie]

Re: Stereo and speakers cut out

Maybe the deck is pulling too much current through a corroded bus fuse with all four speakers hooked up. I would replace/clean the fuse block, all new fuses, and run all new speaker wire. I recommed Monster Cable. And as bill said, make sure you are feeding the head unit enough juice!

 

[Gone]

Re: Stereo and speakers cut out

My guess is that your old speaker wiring scheme had the speaker minus wires tied together. Your new Alpine will not tolerate that. One pair of wires from each individual speaker must be wired to each radio output with no common or shared wires. (8 speaker wires/ 8 radio output wires).

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Stereo and speakers cut out

I agree with Bsturkie, sounds like too many amps are being drawn.

 

[KRS]

Re: Stereo and speakers cut out

I would keep it turned down... I really dislike listening to others' music while I'm at the lake.<br /><br />Just a friendly thought