Silverbullet555
Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2011
- Messages
- 621
Newer to iboats and I like seeing all the work people are doing to their boats, new and old. Thought I would share last year's stereo upgrade that grew a bit out of control as it progressed.
We have a 2002 Cobalt 226 with a Samson Tower. We spend most of our time cruising and floating. She is fast and rides very smooth in most waters.
I wanted to add an amp and a couple tower speakers. At the same time, I wanted to change out the speakers in the boat, retain the stock remote and add a subwoofer.
I started by buy Polk DB-651 speakers off of amazon. They were on sale for $35 per pair so I bought 3 pairs to upgrade the speakers in the boat. I also bought a pair of tower pods, each with 2 Polk DB-651 speakers.
Here is what we started with.
I then decided where I wanted to mountthe electronics and made a template out of cardboard and then cut the mounting boards out of starboard.
Then it was time to figure placement for all the electronics. I cut out templates from cardboard and tried different placements to see what worked best. I started with a Class a/b amp, but that turned out to take up to much space. I ended up going with all Class D amps to save space and power.
I started by creating a crude wiring diagram for everything to make sure I had the proper power and cabling. I wanted to be able to control each amp seperately so I could turn off the tower, or turn off the boat speakers, etc. I also decided to add cooling fans to move some air over the amps since they mouting board will be covered.
This is the speaker wiring diagram as I was working on figuring out how I wanted to wire the speakers.
Here is was working on finalizing the layout with the actual components.
We have a 2002 Cobalt 226 with a Samson Tower. We spend most of our time cruising and floating. She is fast and rides very smooth in most waters.
I wanted to add an amp and a couple tower speakers. At the same time, I wanted to change out the speakers in the boat, retain the stock remote and add a subwoofer.
I started by buy Polk DB-651 speakers off of amazon. They were on sale for $35 per pair so I bought 3 pairs to upgrade the speakers in the boat. I also bought a pair of tower pods, each with 2 Polk DB-651 speakers.
Here is what we started with.
I then decided where I wanted to mountthe electronics and made a template out of cardboard and then cut the mounting boards out of starboard.
Then it was time to figure placement for all the electronics. I cut out templates from cardboard and tried different placements to see what worked best. I started with a Class a/b amp, but that turned out to take up to much space. I ended up going with all Class D amps to save space and power.
I started by creating a crude wiring diagram for everything to make sure I had the proper power and cabling. I wanted to be able to control each amp seperately so I could turn off the tower, or turn off the boat speakers, etc. I also decided to add cooling fans to move some air over the amps since they mouting board will be covered.
This is the speaker wiring diagram as I was working on figuring out how I wanted to wire the speakers.
Here is was working on finalizing the layout with the actual components.
