Speakers popping while trimming

Texas A&M,

You will need to add some wire to the short leads on the caps. They just come with real short and small leads.

You could probably use those crimp type wire connectors on the trim wires (after you add wire to the cap leads) but I would highly recommended soldering everything you can.

Then depending on how you ground it you will need to add some type of terminal to the other end of the wire.

Let us know how it turns out.



Kendall,

I am not sure what is going on with your setup but, as stated in the link I attached, I wasn't having any issues until I added the Clarion EQ. Then I starting getting the pops.

I tried a bunch of stuff before adding the caps. I tried different grounds, moved power wires away from the RCA's and speaker wires - nothing helped.

$4.00 and a few soldering joints later the pop was gone. It is still working and there were no other negatives so I am happy.
 
SeaRay said:
Texas A&M,

You will need to add some wire to the short leads on the caps. They just come with real short and small leads.

You could probably use those crimp type wire connectors on the trim wires (after you add wire to the cap leads) but I would highly recommended soldering everything you can.

Then depending on how you ground it you will need to add some type of terminal to the other end of the wire.

Let us know how it turns out.
Click to expand...


How did you tap into the trim wires? Cut them and then solder them back together (with the cap in place)?
 
Here is what I did for one of the connections:

I soldered short leads on to both wires coming off the cap. Then shrink wrapped the splices.

Then strip back the opposite end of the wire you just added to the positive side of the cap.

Then cut the trim wire at a place that you want to make the splice. Strip back both ends of the trim wire right where you cut it.

Then twist all three wires together (the trim wires and the positive wire on the cap).

I used a water tight joint connector that is pre-filled with solder and melts when you heat it but you could just solder the three together and shrink wrap it or use a water tight wire nut.

Then add whatever you need at the negative side of the cap wire to ground it. I used a ring terminal and mounted it to the negative bus I mentioned earlier.

Repeat for the other trim wire.
 
Thanks for the advise. One more (hopefully simple) question - where do you find the water tight connections? I've never seen them, but I've never looked for them either.
 
I think I found them at Menards or Home Depot.
 
Excellent. I was in the boat today installing my transom mounted trim switch, and had no trouble finding the blue and green striped wires in the engine compartment. I did, however, have trouble finding them by the throttle handle. I didn't look toooo hard, since I wasn't going to install the capacitors tonight, but I was hoping they would be easier to find. I did, however, find a green and a blue wire (no stripe) that went to a plug, and then into the wire loom. I'm assuming these are the trim wires, but didn't get a chance to confirm.

I bought the capacitors today, and will hopefully be able to wire them in tomorrow or Thursday.
 
Texas,

I believe I verified that I had the correct wires by looking at the schematic that was included in my manuals. The wires on my boat, that were by the controller, did not have the stripe on them either. But, my boat is a 1999.

Side note....I see the tower speakers in your picture, what are they?

I am anxious to see how this all turns out...
 
The speakers are Infinitys. I have the whole tower system from them (speakers, amp, mic).

I'm anxious as well. As someone posted earlier, I'm mainly doing this because the popping bothers the wife (I've tuned it out already). She always says 'do you have to use the trim?!?!?!?' haha
 
At this point, I have to ask a question....... Why are only a select few of you having this issue? I have trim pumps, and more, in my boat, yet I never have any popping or other audible issues when using them...... I also made sure that my installation and setup was correct for all of my audible equipment. All grounds are clean and of the correct gauge. Good battery and ground connections. No power cables running against signal cables, etc etc.

I have always believed that these caps and filters you can buy were band-aids on improperly installed systems. The only need I have ever had for a cap was to bolster the power of the amps when they hit hard. Never for noise issues.

Just sayin'........
 
As mentioned before, my issues is undoubtedly caused by my power wires running too near to my signal wires. I am choosing to band-aid it instead of re-routing the wires.... much easier to do.

I know that it's not the RIGHT way, but the end result will be the same.

Just sayin' :grin:
 
I am not sure what initiated the issue in my system. I didn't have it until I added the EQ. The RCA's and power wires are all ran out of the way of other wires. And the system shares a common ground.

I have a pretty elaborate system; 3 amps, 4 in-boat speakers, 4 HLCD tower speakers, a sub, and the EQ.

I use the trim constantly while my kids are wakeboarding (it helps shape the wake) so I didn't want to have any popping in the speakers.
 
On your system, what are the 3 amps for? Are two of them for the tower speakers, or do you have two for speakers (house and tower), and a single for the amp? Also, what is the EQ for?

Just curious to see how your setup is run. I've got the house speakers and the sub running off of a 6 channel amp, and the tower speakers running off of another amp.
 
I have one amp running the four in-boats, one amp running the sub and one amp running the 4 tower speakers.

I would like to upgrade and buy a better amp (6 channel) that would allow me to combine the sub and in-boats. But I bought my amps really cheap and the system sounds really good and is plenty loud, so I don't see the need to drop more money on a better amp (at least not right now).

I do have a really nice Boston Acoustic amp running the 4 HLCDs on the tower. They are insanely loud!!

Adding the EQ was one of the best things I did for my stereo system - and one of the cheapest. It is a Clarion EQS 746 and they can be found online for around 50 bucks (but then you do need to buy more RCA cables and power wires).

I mounted the EQ by the drivers seat and it allows me to control volume, the tone (7 band equalizer), sub level and most importantly the fader right from the drivers seat. It also boost the voltage on the RCA line level so you get better quality out of the RCA outputs.

The EQ also lets you add an aux input directly into the back of it. But, we don't really need it because the head unit I have already has one too.

The fader is really important to me because as I mentioned the tower speakers are really loud and I can fade the in-boats down and leave the tower speakers blaring when someone is wakeboarding. Without the fader, it is way too loud in the boat.

I can make all my adjustments right from the drivers seat. either using the EQ or the wired remote control (just to pause and skip songs on the ipod. Or change radio and my Sirius radio stations). Once you have the EQ wired in, you always use the EQ volume and not the head unit volume.
 
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Very cool. Can I ask how you have all of the amps running to it though? I took a look at it, and it shows that it has 6 channel output... front, rear, and sub.
 
I assume you are referring to the EQ?

There is one input and the three outputs on the EQ. So you only use the front RCA's output on the head unit and it goes into the EQ input.

The EQ then separates that signal into the front, rear and sub channels.

The voltage leaving the RCA outputs of the EQ is higher than most head units output. So you are sending a cleaner, stronger signal to the amps.

My head unit and amps are both on the passenger side of the boat. So I needed to run 4 sets of RCAs to the driver side (where the EQ is mounted) and back. This was the only drawback of my install but it wasn't that big of a deal.

I bought 2 sets of 4 way, very long twisted RCA cables.

The RCA's were:

One from the head unit's front output to the EQ input.

Then one for each front, rear and sub output back to each of those amps.

Hopefully that makes sense???
 
So you separated the house and tower speakers by basically making the house speakers the 'front,' and the tower speakers the 'rear' coming from the EQ. Make sense.

What I can't get clear in my mind though is that on my amp, I have inputs for both the front and rear house speakers... so if you only ran one set of RCAs to the house amp, did you split the signal from the eq into 4 wires to power the house amp (I assume you had to do the same on the tower amp)?
 
I have four RCA inputs on my in-boat speaker amp but I am just using 2 of them (and powering 4 speakers).

I have one set of RCA's going to each of my amps.

Do you currently have front, rear and sub RCA outputs coming out of your head unit? And can you fade between the in-boats and tower speakers through the head unit today?

If yes to both of these, you would basically hook up the amps the same way as they are but instead of the RCA inputs coming from the head unit, they would come from the EQ.

And, only 1 set of outputs on the head unit are needed to go to the EQ (the front RCA output). The other 2 aren't used anymore.

Do you have a sub gain control now?
 
I only have one set of outputs coming out of the head unit. Those two wires run to the tower amp. This amp out an output for another amp, so there is another set of two wires coming out of this amp. These then split and go to the front/rear inputs of the large amp. There is no independent sub RCA, (the amp has the inputs, but it can also gather the signal from the main channels).

I can fade out the tower speakers using the control on the mic that came with the system. I cannot, however, play only the tower speakers. I can also control the sub level via a wired remote that came with my 6 channel amp.

I could wire in the EQ basically the same way... have the front output go to the tower speakers, the rear go to the house speakers, and then the sub go to the sub. I have two Clarion remotes mounted in the boat though and don't want to lose the ability to adjust the volume via the stereo remotes. Would be nice, however, to be able to adjust the tower speakers, as I have a little too much bass coming through them right now, and they distort slightly at top volume (I don't turn it up that high much anyway, BUT.....).

Maybe I can make this a winter time project... Thankfully the EQ is cheap, but needing another set of RCAs (4 wires total) will run the cost up.
 
That is different from what I have.

I am guessing that there may be some sort of signal gain out of the tower amp for the RCA's. But, if not running through the EQ first would definitely benefit you because you are using the same signal for three sets of inputs (you do this with the EQ as well but it it raises the voltage on the RCA lines).


If you really want to get fancy you can actually run 2 EQ's and use one for the in-boats and one for the tower. This would allow you to control the tone adjustment independently for each set of speakers. But, controlling the volume is now a 2 knob adjustment (but then again it would also work as your fader).

You COULD still control the volume of your system through the remote and the head unit. But it is not recommended. The electronics in the EQ will provide a much better signal than the head unit. But the master volume of the head unit will still control the overall sound volume. I set my head unit to about 85% full volume and never touch it. Then just use the EQ volume.

If you plug an aux into the EQ aux jack you bypass the head unit all together....don't even need it.
 
Got the caps wired in tonight, and PRESTO CHANGO, no more popping!!!

The wife is already pleased, which means that the mod is already paying off. Looking forward to hitting the lake this weekend now.
 
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