Stereo - To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade

[NautiGirl]

Ordering my stuff this week.

I'm getting that HTX6 listed above and the JL MX650's (classic grill) bundled and delivered for $877. The guy I talked to was superb!!

I am going to attempt to pull the 14ga speaker wire and power wires myself. And then I'll have my guy take it from there.

Awesome! Glad you got it all figured out.

What's got you leaving everything after power and speaker wires to someone else? You are doing the hard part, why not just finish it off?

[Big Block Power]

Ordering my stuff this week.

I'm getting that HTX6 listed above and the JL MX650's (classic grill) bundled and delivered for $877. The guy I talked to was superb!!

I am going to attempt to pull the 14ga speaker wire and power wires myself. And then I'll have my guy take it from there.

Awesome! Glad you got it all figured out.

What's got you leaving everything after power and speaker wires to someone else? You are doing the hard part, why not just finish it off?

Right is plug and play from there. You know you did it right if you let the smoke out of the wires. Lol
That's how Yt knew it

[Homeskillet]

What's got you leaving everything after power and speaker wires to someone else? You are doing the hard part, why not just finish it off?

Because I have no idea what I'm doing lol. I might watch a Youtube on it today and see if it's something I want to tackle. But at the end of the day, I like the idea of it being connected and stalled professionally. I don't think he'd charge me very much to install and connect the amp.

I plan to pull the wire and connect and install the speakers myself

[NautiGirl]

What's got you leaving everything after power and speaker wires to someone else? You are doing the hard part, why not just finish it off?

Because I have no idea what I'm doing lol. I might watch a Youtube on it today and see if it's something I want to tackle. But at the end of the day, I like the idea of it being connected and stalled professionally. I don't think he'd charge me very much to install and connect the amp.

I plan to pull the wire and connect and install the speakers myself

Come on that's not how we do things around here. Do it yourself - you will learn a ton - and there is like a 99.99999% chance I can talk you through it w/o breaking anything too badly lol.

Seriously its just a bunch of wire connections then a few settings on the amp. If you want to tackle it I can help. BBP is also installing the same amp, I am sure he would be happy to take a few pictures of the install /w his flip phone and post them up.

[Homeskillet]

Yeah I figured a little roasting for that was coming lololol!!

I will think about it. I am not putting in a sub at this time so perhaps it would be easier/doable. That would mean each speaker (6 of them) would each have its own channel - so that should be pretty straight fwd I guess. Do I need to shrink wrap my connectors???

Pull 4 gauge wire through for the Amp shouldn't be too hard - that's just (+) and (-) power right? Then what do I do in terms of connecting the amp to the head unit? Is that just signal??? RCA's???? Is there a specific marine fuse I should put in there? That goes on the (+) wire about a foot from the battery right? What size/amperage fuse???

Do I need to do anything special so there is no power draw when I flip the battery switch to "off?"

I am DEFINITELY a visual learner. Pics would be the cat's meow for me.

The "Fit and Finish" of a Cobalt is excellent as you know. I do not want to detract from that with my install, if you know what I mean????

Massive amounts of questions I know lol!!

[NautiGirl]

Yeah I figured a little roasting for that was coming lololol!!

I will think about it. I am not putting in a sub at this time so perhaps it would be easier/doable. That would mean each speaker (6 of them) would each have its own channel - so that should be pretty straight fwd I guess. Do I need to shrink wrap my connectors???

Yup - you are already doing the speaker install so you will need to terminate the wire on that end, just a duplicate process on the amp side. I would heat shrink the connections on both sides, I found Marine grade adhesive heat shrink tube on amazon and it worked well. I would heat srhink both the speaker connections as well as the battery connections for the amp power wires.

Pull 4 gauge wire through for the Amp shouldn't be too hard - that's just (+) and (-) power right? Then what do I do in terms of connecting the amp to the head unit? Is that just signal??? RCA's???? Is there a specific marine fuse I should put in there? That goes on the (+) wire about a foot from the battery right? What size/amperage fuse???

Yup, just one wire to the battery switch one to the negative battery post for power. You are dead on /w the head unit signal, just a set of RCA cables from the Head Unit pre-outs to the amp.

You will want a inline fuse on the battery positive. Tons of brands out there, I used SeaDog as it matched the factory breakers from cobalt so it looked nice. Wetsounds makes one but they are super expensive. Just match the Amp rating of the fuse to what Wet Sounds specs.

Do I need to do anything special so there is no power draw when I flip the battery switch to "off?"

You will need to run a low voltage "turn on wire" from your head unit to your amp. This is usually a blue wire on the back of the head unit. This is what tells the amp to turn on when the head unit powers up.

I am DEFINITELY a visual learner. Pics would be the cat's meow for me.



The "Fit and Finish" of a Cobalt is excellent as you know. I do not want to detract from that with my install, if you know what I mean????

Massive amounts of questions I know lol!!

Totally get it, its not hard and you have all the basics down. We will be at our boat in a couple weeks to wrap everything up and I can send pics if you want. Happy to help /w whatever questions.

[Homeskillet]

Thanks for the help!!

"Yup, just one wire to the battery switch one to the negative battery post for power. You are dead on /w the head unit signal, just a set of RCA cables from the Head Unit pre-outs to the amp."

So I don't run a black and a red off the battery? I run it to the "battery selector" under the bench seat on the SB side of the boat? I was thinking I would run a red and black off the battery.

[NautiGirl]

Thanks for the help!!

"Yup, just one wire to the battery switch one to the negative battery post for power. You are dead on /w the head unit signal, just a set of RCA cables from the Head Unit pre-outs to the amp."

So I don't run a black and a red off the battery? I run it to the "battery selector" under the bench seat on the SB side of the boat? I was thinking I would run a red and black off the battery.

I'll assume you have a simple battery switch and not an ACR. If you have an ACR this all changes.

Six of one half dozen of another. I ran to the battery switch so the battery that is powering the amps will always be the same battery that is charging while we are ruining for the day.

If you power the amp directly off the port battery and have the battery switch set to use the starboard battery you could run into a problem with a dead port battery. In that case you would have to:

Start on the starboard battery
move the battery switch to both while running so the port will charge up
Then move the switch back to starboard while listening to music so the batteries are no longer combined.

It will work, think BBP is running his this way, but he is way smarter than I am and can remember to do all that.

[Homeskillet]

Oh boy....

How fast is that battery going to drain? I am sure there are variables in terms of settings on the stereo, how loud I'm playing it, etc. But I used to fish for hours upon hours with my stereo on (only 2 speakers and no amp - so huge difference there). But along with the stereo, I had all my electronics hooked up to my starting battery (PM1 group 31 AGM, then later I switched to an Optima Blue Top). My graphs took a decent amount of juice and they were on full time too...and my engine was a Gen 1 Verado - which takes a ton of juice to ignite lol!!!

I guess I was thinking I'd hook to the Port battery, and start from that battery as well. That way it would charge when I was running. I was thinking I could always switch back to the STB side to start if the stereo sucked too much juice. Kind of like a back up.

[NautiGirl]

Oh boy....

How fast is that battery going to drain? I am sure there are variables in terms of settings on the stereo, how loud I'm playing it, etc. But I used to fish for hours upon hours with my stereo on (only 2 speakers and no amp - so huge difference there). But along with the stereo, I had all my electronics hooked up to my starting battery (PM1 group 31 AGM, then later I switched to an Optima Blue Top). My graphs took a decent amount of juice and they were on full time too...and my engine was a Gen 1 Verado - which takes a ton of juice to ignite lol!!!

I guess I was thinking I'd hook to the Port battery, and start from that battery as well. That way it would charge when I was running. I was thinking I could always switch back to the STB side to start if the stereo sucked too much juice. Kind of like a back up.

That plan will work also. Can't really tell you how long you can play off a battery without knowing the amp draw of the amplifier. It's going to be around a 50A Fuse, but you are right it will draw nowhere near that. We played our two much smaller Sony amps for about 5 hours one day and the boat still started, but I was nervous.

[Homeskillet]

If the battery switch turns off my radio, I'm thinking that I shouldn't have to run any extra cable to that switch to cut power to the amp, right?

Or in other words, If the blue wire on the head unit sends a signal to the amp to turn on, and there's no signal going to the head unit because the battery switch is in the "off" position, then the amp shouldn't be drawing power at that time (shouldn't drain my batteries when I have the old girl parked in the garage). Am I'm thinking this through correctly?

[Ytmsn]

No worries. "It's easy" they say. "Think of the money you'll save" they say. "And its fun!"

DimComplicatedGalapagoshawk-max-1mb.gif

tenor (1).gif

ms-jMi6dh.gif

[NautiGirl]

If the battery switch turns off my radio, I'm thinking that I shouldn't have to run any extra cable to that switch to cut power to the amp, right?

Or in other words, If the blue wire on the head unit sends a signal to the amp to turn on, and there's no signal going to the head unit because the battery switch is in the "off" position, then the amp shouldn't be drawing power at that time (shouldn't drain my batteries when I have the old girl parked in the garage). Am I'm thinking this through correctly?

That is correct, the amp relies on the signal from the head unit to turn on. No power from Head Unit means the amp will be off.

[Big Block Power]

Why do I smell smoke. Lol
Oh Homeskillet is cooking. Lol
I ran and fused A 12v wire to keep my radio alive all the time so I don't lose my presets. If you never listen to the radio then no big deal. If you turn your battery switch off your presets are gone. You don't have to worry about channing the looks of your Cobalt everything is hid behind panels. Just do a nice job running wires to the amp when you mount it to the board in your storage compartments. I have some pictures of you need. Drive up and week do both boats at the same time this spring. The htx is a class D amp so it doesn't draw as much as a class A or B. I always get Nervous on start up after 10 minutes of the radio being on. I have not had a dead battery yet.

[Bfun220]

I wouldn't set up anything that required moving your battery switch with the engine running.