Installed powered sub today

[MrG]

Yes you can always add more amps ect but where does it end. I’m super happy that my current system will play all day long and still start the boat at the end of the day with just a single Group 32 battery. It’s gonna be interesting to see how much power a single 12 pulls from the battery. I’m gonna throw the amp clamp on the system and see what my current t power draw is and what it go’s up to with the new sub. I’m sure where you have the sub volume set at can effect how much power you draw

 

[basshawk84]

It would be interesting to hear people’s thoughts on the Wetsounds Powerd 10 inch sub ($650) vs the $200 Rockford 12 inch sub. Derick did you have the Wetsounds sub in your boat?

I've got no comparison, but do have the WetSounds 10" powered sub under my helm. I installed it last year long with 8" WetSounds speakers, new head unit and amp. Really a great setup and that bass really kicks!

 

[MrG]

Here she is. $199 shipped came with a 4Gauge wire kit (kinda cheesy) but I’m sure I can use some of the wire or the fuse holder. I’m just gonna run some 0 gauge power and ground to under the helm and call it a day. That way if I wanna up grade down the road I have plenty of power where I need it.

 

[MrG]

BassHawk: I take it your powerd Wetsounds Sub is under the drivers helm? If so does your helm door rattle?
I was gonna just put some rubber weather stripping around the inside of the door, but wondered what the factory did.

 

[Arps]

I used dynamat on most of my helm to keep the rattles to a minimum

 

[basshawk84]

BassHawk: I take it your powerd Wetsounds Sub is under the drivers helm? If so does your helm door rattle?
I was gonna just put some rubber weather stripping around the inside of the door, but wondered what the factory did.

I thought about adding some rubber strip, but after I got the amp set it wasn't an issue unless the volume is turned up to 45 on a scale of 50. The 8" speakers put out a lot more bass than the 6.5" speakers as well, so that helps a lot with the overall feel. You cant tell where the bass is coming from once sitting in the boat.

 

[MrG]

Well, I installed the sub. It took about 3 Hrs to do. Biggest Pain was removing the side skirt that runs the length of the boat. This needed to come off so I could pull power from the helm to the battery. I ran some 0 gauge wire and installed a power block so future stereo stuff will be easy.

This is what I started with.

You can see the aera right above the battery cable that Bennington was nice enough to imbed a piece of plastic under the fiberglass to make it a mounting location. Thank you factory

 

[MrG]

Here is what it looks like installed

 

[MrG]

So here are my thoughts on this Sub,
It’s worth $200. Hopefully more tuning I can get it to sound better because Right now it seems to distort and the bass becomes muddy fairly quickly. Hopefully this will get better as I have more time to play with all the settings.


The power hook up is VERY poor. I recommend using very soft and flexible wire coming into the plug. Because you only have to move it very slightly and the sub un plugs itself. This may not be a issue cause not very many people are going to be moving the sub in and out of its location. I do wish this plug snapped in and stayed in like it’s supposed to. Or if it just had a hard wire connection, so it could never come unplugged by accident. I saw amazon had “sales of this item are under review” you couldn’t buy from amazon direct I bought it from a 3rd party I’m guessing that amazon is reviewing this item for the plug issue I’m complaining about.

 

[Michiman]

Mr. G, I have to agree with you about the plug not "snapping" into position. Initially when I couldn't get my to work, I thought that might be the problem. That said, I've had no problem with my connection coming loose.

As far as the muddled sound, I think once you play with the settings that problem will go away. I can turn mine up to the point where my passengers can no longer communicate with each other (thus eliciting a "stare") and the bass sounds great. At that point, my bass boost is set to minimum. At lower volume levels, I'm at the next mark if that makes any sense. Can't imagine going any higher.

 

[Jim Rampello]

I read some info regarding gain on a sub. The lower you set it the less it distorts. Gain seems to be the loudness button that used to be on stereos for the sub, the volume adjustment increases the volume the gain does something to the signal???? Amplification/distortion????

Of course I could be completely wrong though!!!!

 

[Michiman]

Jim, I think you're correct. The lower the "gain" setting, the less distortion. The "cross-over" is the frequency range of music that the sub will play. After playing around with my system, I've set it up just above the minimum gain and slightly more on the cross-over, leaving the "punch" adjustment to make the final fine tuning (usually between minimum and the first mark, depending on the song and volume). I couldn't permanently install the "punch" adjustment knob so I just have it handy.

 

[MrG]

I have the gain and crossover points at the lowest settings & yes it sounds better. It sounds fine, like I said I’m totally happy with it & it’s worth the $200. I’ll do the power draw test this weekend. The sub and headuit played all day with zero issues at start up. And to be honest if the sub would have drawn down the battery to the point were I was gonna have start up issues at the end of the day then that would have been the deciding factor on this. But that fact that you can simply throw it in and make your stock system better with a low power draw is exactly what I was looking for. So mission accomplished

 

[Baja 252]

I finally got my new boat and am going to tackle the install next weekend. I have the stern radius, so I'm going to install it behind the captains chair in the backrest of the rear seat. That makes battery and right speaker access easy. I still have a couple things I'm not sure about.

1) If I understand correctly I don't think I don't need left speaker wire input for the sub, right? But I'm still unclear of if I need left speaker wire input to to get the auto on feature to work right?? That would be hard on my boat with full under skinning. If I do need both, I put the + and - of the left and right speakers together for the auto on input?? Doesn't hooking the left and right together feed back through my splice to the speakers and mess up something? You can tell I'm not a stereo guy.
2) When you tap into the speaker wire what's whats the best way to do it? Do you use those cheap add a wire things with the pin you press down, use a butt connector and add the wire to the sub or do I need to solder the connections?
3) I'm running the negative cable to the battery. My boat has the safety hub, should I use it for the positive or go straight to the battery?

Thanks

 

[Devin]

Does anyone else have an issue using the auto sense turn on where it stays on 24/7 and kills your batter? That is the issue I am having.

 

[DanielG]

I finally got my new boat and am going to tackle the install next weekend. I have the stern radius, so I'm going to install it behind the captains chair in the backrest of the rear seat. That makes battery and right speaker access easy. I still have a couple things I'm not sure about.

1) If I understand correctly I don't think I don't need left speaker wire input for the sub, right? But I'm still unclear of if I need left speaker wire input to to get the auto on feature to work right?? That would be hard on my boat with full under skinning. If I do need both, I put the + and - of the left and right speakers together for the auto on input?? Doesn't hooking the left and right together feed back through my splice to the speakers and mess up something? You can tell I'm not a stereo guy.
2) When you tap into the speaker wire what's whats the best way to do it? Do you use those cheap add a wire things with the pin you press down, use a butt connector and add the wire to the sub or do I need to solder the connections?
3) I'm running the negative cable to the battery. My boat has the safety hub, should I use it for the positive or go straight to the battery?

Thanks

Baja, I didn't splice or use the speaker wires at all. I used one of the RCA Outputs on the back of the head unit (Rear RCA Out, if I remember correctly). The only wires I had to run to the helm was the one for the RCA output and the Sub volume control wire. I popped a small single hole in the back (just large enough to get the RCA plug through) and ran both the Sub volume control wire and the RCA wire to the helm and came up through the wiring hole where all the other wires are. Don't over complicate it. Forget splicing. Plug and play!

 

[basshawk84]

BassHawk: I take it your powerd Wetsounds Sub is under the drivers helm? If so does your helm door rattle?
I was gonna just put some rubber weather stripping around the inside of the door, but wondered what the factory did.

Nope, no rattle from the door.....

 

[Michiman]

Does anyone else have an issue using the auto sense turn on where it stays on 24/7 and kills your batter? That is the issue I am having.

My "auto off" doesn't seem to work so I just turn it on and off as needed. Didn't realize the situation in the beginning but fortunately it didn't run the battery down.

 

[Michiman]

I finally got my new boat and am going to tackle the install next weekend. I have the stern radius, so I'm going to install it behind the captains chair in the backrest of the rear seat. That makes battery and right speaker access easy. I still have a couple things I'm not sure about.

1) If I understand correctly I don't think I don't need left speaker wire input for the sub, right? But I'm still unclear of if I need left speaker wire input to to get the auto on feature to work right?? That would be hard on my boat with full under skinning. If I do need both, I put the + and - of the left and right speakers together for the auto on input?? Doesn't hooking the left and right together feed back through my splice to the speakers and mess up something? You can tell I'm not a stereo guy.
2) When you tap into the speaker wire what's whats the best way to do it? Do you use those cheap add a wire things with the pin you press down, use a butt connector and add the wire to the sub or do I need to solder the connections?
3) I'm running the negative cable to the battery. My boat has the safety hub, should I use it for the positive or go straight to the battery?

Thanks

Baja, like you, running RCA cords and such up to the helm was a bit more than I wanted to tackle. As such, I'll attempt to answer your questions:
1. No, you don't need both right and left for the sub to work. That said, I've been told by the manufacturer that most bass comes through the left channel so you may not get the effect you were looking for. If you use both, they are attached separately to the audio pigtail that plugs into the unit. When I was having problems getting mine to work, I was only connecting the left speaker wires (no way for me to get access to the right). Only after much frustration did I find out that even though I was only using the left, I did have to have wires attaching to the right input for it to work. So mine is set up as left positive to left positive pigtail, left negative to left negative pigtail, left positive to right positive pigtail, left negative to right negative pigtail. Hope that makes sense!

2. I just cut the wire going to the speaker and used a wire nut and another length of speaker wire to make the splice.

3. I ran my (black) negative right to the safety hub and would have liked to do the same for the positive, but could not find a fuse that would work in the safety hub. All that I could find were way too large amps (I think it requires a 10 amp fuse). As such, I bought an in-line fuse set-up and installed it near the end of the positive line and then ran it to the post on the safety hub along with the two wires from the batteries. I do have a picture of this and could upload this weekend if that would help.

Good luck and well worth the time!!

 

[Baja 252]

I finally got started on my install today.



I'm not to good with stereo stuff, so I have a few questions and things I want to confirm.

I have a fastback which has the rear speakers facing back. I discovered the rear speaker wiring isn't under the back seats, it must be in the add on section behind the rear seats. I didn't really want to pull it all apart, so I'm not going to tap into the speaker wires. I ran RCA cables to the helm (not as bad as I thought) where I found unused RCA outputs for both front and rear speakers.



So I'm just going to plug my RCA cables into the rear plugs, right? That means I set the "input level" switch to LOW, right?

While I ran wires to the helm I also ran the cable for the remote and a wire for the Auto Turn-On feature. The Kicker manual says the Blue/White wire is an "Amplifier Turn-On" wire. It's under there, but it goes into a huge plug with all the other radio wires and disappears into a huge bundle of wires. I have no clue where it's going, I expected it to be a dead end under the helm.


I guess I could splice into it, is that what I should do?
Or I have several unused Acc switches on the dash could I hook it up to one of those and just use it to turn the sub on and off when I want?

I have a Safety Hub 150.




I'm running the Neg cable to the Neg side of the hub (on right) to keep the Neg cable under 3 feet long.
I was going to run the Pos cable to one of the 4 large posts on the hub (on bottom) so the power to the sub would shut off when I turn the battery switch to OFF. But there is no power to that side of the hub. I don't see where a fuse would go on that side of the hub or how to get power to that side of the hub, what am I missing??
I'm going to also run an inline circuit breaker, so I could just run the Pos cable directly to the battery, I just thought it would be nice to have it going thru the switch.

Thanks in advance for any help with my questions.
When I get it done I'll post up some photos of the install.