www.iFourWinns.com

My extent of "messing with it" consisted of crawling under the seat to remove it from the mounted location so I could get to the fuses. I attempted to put three new fuses in and that's when it smoked. That's also when I immediately unhooked it as I'm aware of the dangers of electrical fires on boats.

I think it would be in my best interest to have a qualified marine electrician look at it. I don't entirely buy the speaker wire from the switch explanation.

_________________
Askieffer
2009 SL242

Yeah, it sucks when oddball things happen and get worse when you're trying to start fixing it. It sucks even more when you're faced with shelling out bigger bucks getting a marine mechanic involved. You might want to shop around to car audio places near the water as some do work on boats. Might be less expensive and perhaps better qualified than a boat place. Just be sure to ask for references and CALL THEM.

Tangentially, how are you using the boat and the sound system? What do you really want out of it? Now might be a good time to think 'bigger picture'. Plenty of folks here have experience with a variety of setups and use patterns. Now that you've got to replace the amp (likely) there might be other things to consider. What do you really want out of it?

_________________
-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

I don't want it to be that loud annoying boat on the lake blaring their choice of music. I just want to be able to hear it in the boat while under way, it needs to drown out the captains choice that is still loud even when off. We pull up in a cove and float a lot. I want to be able to turn the transom speakers and tower speakers on louder than the four speakers in the boat so we can hear it floating and not blow those in the boat out. I'm not going to play it while wake boarding, I'm in my 40's and that nonsense takes every bit of my concentration so I don't injure myself.

I just want selectable choices with a nice deep sound.

Thanks for the help.

_________________
Askieffer
2009 SL242

What you are looking to do is completely possible, and may be as simple as reconfiguring some RCA cables between the head-unit and amps. If your head-unit has front and rear RCA outputs and the ability to fade between them, then you can run the front RCA cables to the amp driving the in-boat speakers. Then run the rear outputs to the amp driving your transom speakers. This allows the in-boat occupants to fade down the interior speakers, while leaving the transom speakers playing at the head-unit volume level. From there, we can a little more involved with the use of an actual volume zone controller. A zone controller would allow for true volume control of each "zone". This can be done with inexpensive line level POTs, a zone controller line driver, or an EQ.

Speaker placement, the number of speakers, the power driving them and how they are tuned will all factor into how well they can be heard over wind, water and engine noise. Having a sub will also help to enrich the sound and balance it out by filling those missing notes that a typical 6.5" in-boat will not want to reproduce. For tower speakers, there is no substitute for surface area. More speakers will make it louder, but does nothing to expand the mid-bass. You need larger speakers to accomplish this.