Advice for a subwoofer and amp in 2002 300DA

[Water U Lookin' At]

I know there have been many posts about mods to our sundancers, but I haven't seen any posts regarding a sub and amp in a 300. I'm thinking about putting one in the helm seat facing outward like on the 44 sundancer I saw, but I wanted to know if anyone has done this and how hard it is to wire an after market amp with the Clarion stereo. Is the wiring difficult? Any advice is appreiciated.


Eddie

 

[Bottom Line]

I can't help with the wiring...but I think that location may be the best spot to place a sub on a 300DA. I am contemplating similar audio upgrades this year.

 

[NateRW21]

I know there have been many posts about mods to our sundancers, but I haven't seen any posts regarding a sub and amp in a 300. I'm thinking about putting one in the helm seat facing outward like on the 44 sundancer I saw, but I wanted to know if anyone has done this and how hard it is to wire an after market amp with the Clarion stereo. Is the wiring difficult? Any advice is appreiciated.


Eddie

Hook up isn't difficult at all.

If you want a loose sub where you have to build your own box, take a look at Wet Sounds; they've got some of the best stuff on the water... Unfortunately, they do not have their line of amplifiers out yet.

Depending on the size of your amplifier, you'll need to run between 6ga and 4ga power and ground wire from your Battery(ies); always go bigger for a boat. Make sure you place an in-line fuse on the positive wire as close to the battery as possible. To determine the fuse spec, simply find the fuse(s) in the amplifier... that's the size fuse you need for your in-line; if it's one 20a, install a 20a fuse. If it's three 15a, install a 45a fuse. You get the point.

Depending on the options of amplifier comes with, it can be turned on one of two ways... First with a control signal. Should you already have an amp, just bump the blue wire from the other amp to your new one. If you do not have an amp but your stereo head unit has an unused blue wire on it; that will be your control signal... run it to your new amp. Otherwise, find a 12v hot (either constant or ignition hot; depending when you want your sub to function), run it to one side of a SPST switch, the other side to your amp. This will turn on the amp. The second way an amp can be turned on is signal sensing. This is where you do not run a control wire; the amp can turn itself on by sensing a signal coming to it from the low level audio wires. Check the manual to see if you have this option; don't just assume you do.

Running your Low level audio wires (RCA's)... If your head unit has preouts (Female RCA Jacks that will say "front", "rear", or "sub"/"non-fade") Obviously if you have the "sub" or "non-fade", you'll want to use those preouts... otherwise, the front or rear (I would advise use of the rear) will work. If you do not have any preouts, you'll have to pick up a low level converter ($20-$50 from any car audio store), solder the leads from the low level converter to your rear speaker leads. You'll then have to adjust the gain on the converter once you're up and running. For your low level audio wires (RCA's)... pick up a set of twisted pairs (that is the style, not brand) which will be long enough to get from your head unit to your amp... but try to keep the extra length as short as possible (if you need 11ft, don't buy 17' if you can get 12'). Plug these into your amp... if you have a single channel amp, you won't have any options where to plug it in... will only be one place. If you have a multi channel amp, you'll have to be sure you can bridge the amp to get enough power to push the sub (always try to be at least 80% of the speaker's max RMS wattage). Follow the directions in the manual for wiring bridged.

Speaker wire... run 14ga or 12ga wire from the amp to the woofer; if it's single voice coil, this is it... you're done. If it's dual voice coil, you'll have to wire it either in series or in parallel. If you wire in parallel, you will be dividing your advertised load (impedance/ohm) by the number of speakers or coils you have. Example... the Wet Sounds 10" sub has dual 4omh voice coils, wired in parallel the amp will "see" a total 2omh load. Wiring in series simply adds the load of each speaker/voice coil... for the same sub listed before, series wiring will have the amp "seeing" an 8ohm load. Important to note... verify at what load your amp is stable. MOST amps will not go below 2ohm load (this is also where they will produce the peak power). If power for an amp is rated at 14.4v with a 4ohm load to be 400 watts... automatically assume the amp will provide 800 watts with a 2ohm load and 200 watts with an 8ohm load. (this is not exact at all; depends of efficiency of the amp... but it's close enough)

Setting up the amp... Follow the instructions in your manual. But you'll want to adjust the cross-over to "low", or leave it off and adjust the EQ's to match the specs for your sub (example: 30hz low, 500hz high). If you want you can trim the high side a bit lower; this will limit the sub from producing sounds that while in it's range... aren't really going to come out as clean. Setting the gain for the amp should be covered in your amp manual... but it generally says something like: turn your head unit up to 3/4 volume with the gain on the amp set lowest, slowly increase the gain until distortion is heard, then back off slightly. Or if you want to have more bass and will never have the mid-range speakers running that loud you can crank up the stereo to the highest you'll ever play it, then adjust the amp for the sub as before. All of this depends on if you have sub control on the head unit or a remote gain (sub volume) adjuster with the amp.

If you have sub/non-fader preouts, chances are you'll have a sub control on your head unit... this is the best possible route. If you don't have this, hopefully your amp will have a remote gain control. Lastly... if you have neither of these, you have one more route. You can install passive cross-overs at the mid-range speakers to stop them from receiving a bass signal (which is really generally what a mid-range driver ends up getting its distortion). By doing this, your sub will be producing the only bass signal and you can use the bass adjustment on your head unit to control the sub.



Hope all of that helps!!

 

[Water U Lookin' At]

Wow! Thanks for that reply. I'll print that out and take it to the boat with me. It's quite a reference!


Eddie

 

[Bridog]

Great stuff Nate. Is this your occupation? Thanks for the help. Brian

 

[NateRW21]

Nope... just one of my MANY interests and hobbies. Sort of got into it because I used to at one point be a mechanic... tried to get experience in all area's of vehicles... to include vehicle electronics. Makes owning vehicles considerably cheaper for me!! And it makes nice stereos about 30% cheaper since I'm not paying labor for install!!

A GREAT place for car electrical and stereo info is www.the12volt.com

If anyone has questions, shoot me a PM... if I can't answer it I'll do my best to help you find the answer. I'm the first to admit I am far, far from knowing everything there is to know!

 

[georgelbenson1]

Great stuff on hooking up Amplifier / quick question / do you have to goto the battery with the ground and power wires? can you hook up the the DC curcuit breaker? Is there enough power there for the Sub?