Yet another speaker/amp question , box no box, amp only ?

[Chris K]

So I was reading another post about someone installing a sub, and i posted my quesiton in there, and realized I was hijacking their thread. So I thought I would post the question/statements separately.

In my old boat I put in some 6" kickers .. they were just on the gunnel of an 18.5 searay, mounted in a board that was carpeted, so it was fully free air behind them, no boxing in at all. This was with a new Clarion head unit and a
JBL MA6004 4-Channel Full-Range Marine Amplifier

pushing them. They sounded like dodo. Took them same speakers out, put them in a box and put em on the deck and they sound awesome. Just a regular ol box I made, nothing fancy and no air volume calculations and all that stuff.

So i put JBL marine 6x9 in the boat and they were better but still not great. Took a pair of them out and put them in a 6x9 box and they sounded much better.

So my concern with the POLK's is that even puttin an amp behind them, without boxing them in that they wont sound as good as they could. Granted I am in no way interested in trying to figure out a way to box in the areas behing the speakers, but you guys that have put in the POLK 5000.5 amp only, say its definitely an improvement?

I am not trying to get super big sounds, but I would like to be able to crank it up a bit while were hangin out at the sand bar, its usually at least mine and my bro-in-law's boat. It does fine now, but ... ya know it can always do better.

 

[Speedling]

If you want sounds at the sandbar, you want a tower with some speakers on an amp.

 

[Chris K]

hmm.. well i dont like that answer . BTW, I grew up around Cedar Lake... still have family all over the area, Crete, Grant Park IL, Shererville, Crown Point, I myself grew up in Sauk Village. I am sure we did some fishing there when I was a kid. Small world.

 

[Speedling]

Putting boxes behind your speakers will make them more directional to a small degree. Louder straight ahead to a degree as well. Some have put the nice 6x9's behind the seats on the swim platform which may be a perfect fit for you.

 

[Bill D]

@Chris K my wife and I are from Grant Park. We moved to Bama a couple years ago. Small world.

 

[Speedling]

Sorry, i was writing that earlier and just finished while not driving.

Well next time you visit family send me a message and maybe we'll hang out on the little muddy lake here. Cedar tucky is where i live but born and raised in Lansing. My wife is from Schererville.
We hope to move down by Lake Cumberland or have a cottage but i h
Have 22 years till fully retired so it's a bit aways.

You should try and come up to Lake Cumberland for the little meet and greet! Check my signature for the link. (Turn phone sideways if using a phone)

 

[Chris K]

Well i never knew there was anyone but my aunt n uncle that lived in grant park. besides the 3 bar owners, and the post office worker. The live on main st right across the street from railroad tracks that are busy like 18 million times a day.. and 3000 times a night.

Speedling, oddly enough my grandparents and uncles first near wife were from lansing. Before it was .... whatever mess it is now a days. Its like a west virginia family reuinion in here haha...

 

[Bill D]

@Speedling i didn't think people actually from Cedar Lake called it Cedar-Tucky. Lol

 

[Mainah]

@Chris K - I just finished adding 2-6x9 and a sub to my 2016 242 ls. I also repowered everything with 2-jl audio M400/4 amps. I can attest that clean amplification with tuned crossover settings in the amp did help the stock speakers significantly. Proper enclosures will always sound better/tighter in my opinion. I would love to make built in custom enclosures for the boat but the cost and time vs. reward means I likely never will. Also the cheapest and easiest way to improve the volume and quality is to use an aux cord instead of Bluetooth.

One thing you can do is make speaker backing rings out of 3/4 hdpe. The stock speakers screws have nearly nothing to bite into and there is enough deflection in the fiberglass when the speakers are on to make a difference in volume and quality. The rings solve for both of those issues. For me adding the polk db 6x9s in the mid cabin really helped with the mid bass.

In the end I left the factory tweeters and the rear deck connected to the stock head unit. The subwoffer using two channels in bridged mode on one of the amps, the 4 - 6inch and the 6x9s each on their own amp channel with everything hooked up at 4 ohms. I also made the beefy backing rings for everything. The amps have plenty of headroom if I ever go with louder/better speakers but this got be where I wanted to be (seems to me twice as loud as stock with full range sound quality). The only thing I would have done different is a better sub in a different location.

Total cost for me was about $1k but I went overkill on new high quality wire for everything which was about $200 by itself.

I still have to take more photos but here is my amp board all done and wired.


Good luck and if you do decide to make molds for custom enclosures can I be the first in line to borrow them from you? Interested to see what you end up doing and how it sounds.

 

[Chris K]

well looking at your install, i am positive that you would not want anything i was to build. That is the cleanest install I have ever seen I believe. Its... dare I say .. dam near sexy.

 

[Speedling]

Well i never knew there was anyone but my aunt n uncle that lived in grant park. besides the 3 bar owners, and the post office worker. The live on main st right across the street from railroad tracks that are busy like 18 million times a day.. and 3000 times a night.

Speedling, oddly enough my grandparents and uncles first near wife were from lansing. Before it was .... whatever mess it is now a days. Its like a west virginia family reuinion in here haha...

Very diplomatic way of describing Lansing.
And cedar tucky is great. I try to boat on sea Michigan as much as i can though. Just took boat out of the garage yesterday!