subwoofer box for marine??
 

i have a ton of experiance with car audio and video but i have never done a subwoofer box for a boat. i cant decide if i want to stick with my bazooka base tubes or throw a pair of 10s in there. my issue is i dont know what kind of box to build for it since they are not in a trunk like in a car. i was thinking about mounting them under the dash where they will be out of sight for the most part and be away from kicking feet. there is a bunch of empty wasted space behind those panels under the dash so it is going to be the new home of my audio setup that was previously wasting space under the rear seat.

Hey MX20...I've done both...I had a bazooka under the rear seat and I now have a pair or Polk momo 10's built into the rear bench. Not sure which one will work the best for you...seems there are lots of compromises between cost/room/function when putting these suckers in.

Post some pics when you get done!

Doug

which one sounded better? i had 2 6" tubes last season, this year i was planning 1 ten in the rear seat area but now that i found this room i am thinking 4 6" tubes or 2 10" subs

My 2 10's sound better...mostly because these 10's are a higher quality speaker than the 8" tube was....the tube sounded a bit sharper but the 10's resonate wonderfully!

I have 4 6.5" polk momo's fed by a 1000w baja amp and the 2 10" Polk momo's are fed by a 2000w amp under the back seat. It puts out a TON of sound!

The 10's have a pretty stout grill and a stainless steel cone...pretty tough speakers so I'm not too worried about someone kicking them. And we do a bit of beer drinking and floor stomping when it's turned up!!

Doug

so are they just mounted in there "free air" style or are they in a sealed or ported box?

just mounted to the bench seat frame....nothing fancy....a little reinforcing or boxing may help a little..but they sound really good! I'm always having girls walking over to sit on the seat while it's turned up!:D

Can you fit 2 10" bazooka tubes? Their 6" tubes are just too small, especially for in an open area like a boat. A 6" speaker can only produce bass so low and having 4 won't fix that. I actually have a single 10" tube in mine and it sounds great. Nice tight solid bass.
A lot of it depends on what type of music you listen to as well. A ported enclosure will give you the best bass for a limited amount of power. I would probably stay away from a sealed enclosure in a boat unless you have tons of power.

Good thread, I was thinking of adding a sub to my setup. I currently have 2 6.5's on the sides next to driver and passenger and 2 6x9's under the rear set. I was thinking of putting a 10 in the center of the rear bench but not sure if I should build a ported box or leave it open air. Wouldn't having a ported box get you better low frequency bass response?

We did the first stage of our stereo system several summers ago and it sounds amazing. The system we have is:

• Pioneer Receiver (i think its' the DEH-P6700, not sure though)
• 4 - 6x9 Infiniti Kappa series speakers
• 1 MTX Thunder 801D 600w amplifier
• 1 - MTX 12" Sub in Sealed enclosure, sized for the sub
• Remote on swim platform

The enclosure was a standard MDF enclosure from crutchfield and i stripped the carpet off of it and took it down to Line-X and had it sprayed as MDF absorbs water so i didn't want that to happen. Line-X sealed it up and it's still in perfect shape.

We went with the sealed enclosure because most of the music we listen to has tight bass notes and the sealed enclosure makes them sound amazing. Not really fans of rap or hip hop with the long bass notes so this was the best enclosure. It's sized for the sub perfectly so bass ouput is perfect. Right now the amp is putting out 300w @ 4 ohms to the one sub, but the plan for future upgrades would be to get another 12" and run the amplifier at 2 ohms putting out 600w.

We stuck the sub on the starboard side of the engine compartment as it was the only space where we could fit it. Closing the sun deck does muffle the sub a little bit, but we find ourselves turning down amplifier to it anyways, so not really an issue. In the future, we'd like to install it in a better spot somewhere else in the boat.

Amplifier is installed behind the helm and i made a mounting panel that i screwed into the back of the foot board on the helm with about 12 short screws so that it was sturdy. In turn, 4 bolts were countersunk through the panel before installation to provide studs for mounting the amp. This allows us to easily remove it from the boat during the winter and store it in the house.

I also used high quality StreetWirez cable for everything. A 0/1 gauge ground and 0/1 gauge positive run from the battery in the engine compartment to a 4 bank distribution panel under the helm. Here the sub amplifier is mounted and connected to one of the banks on the panel, with the appropriate fuse installed. This setup allows us to easily add more amplifiers and we only have to wire them to the power distribution panel a few inches away and never have to run power from the engine compartment for any audio upgrades.

Future plans are to add 2 speakers to the bow as well as 2 on the tower and of course another sub. Also have to purchase a 4 channel amp to power the bow and tower speakers.

Just to throw in my setup too, I've got a 10" sub mounted in a bandpass box behind my rear seats on the port side. I've always had great results with bandpass boxes, so that's why I went that route. I picked up a cheap one off ebay, and it's worked great. It's not permanently attached, so it makes it easy to remove for winter storage or if I need to climb back there for repairs. It fits really snug back there. The 600w amp is mounted on the exterior of the engine cover. I've wired it into an accessory switch on the dash so it can be switched on and off. I'm not much into the rap music, but it sounds great for all styles of music.