As some of you might know, I generally like to go about tearing my boat apart and upgrading it. Half the reason we bought our 95 325 Aft Cabin was that it would make a good project boat.
With this in mind, here is the current project I am working on - a stereo upgrade.
One goal was to make the system a piece of art as much as a functioning stereo system. So I used solid black Corian as a base to mount all of the components on. When polished to a high gloss, the Corian looks a bit like Onyx.
I went for a heavy-duty industrial-art look, with the Corian and stainless steel handles and hardware.
There are 4 sections to the rack mounted system. The sections can each be removed independantly, and I can upgrade a section at a later date if I wish by simply replacing a Corian section (hopefully it'll be awhile before that happens).
The top section is a multi-function tank monitor, that monitors both fuel tanks, both water tanks, the holding tank, and even the deodorizer tank in the Crown electric head.
It is not part of the stereo system, but I carried the Corian motif over to the tank monitor for a nice matching look.
The first stereo section consists of a Sony head unit with wired remote to the flybridge, wireless remote, and control to a 10CD changer located in the rear-berth closet. Below that is an XM Radio receiver, as well as a 30 LED Vu Meter and equalizer.
I have separated the system into 3 zones, and am using the equalizer as a pre-amp, which is connected to a 4 channel x 40Watt stereo amplifier and seperate subwoofer amp. I don't need a lot of power, so a nice 40Watt per channel system I felt would be decent in the main salon.
To conserve battery power when cruising, we can turn off the salon amplifiers when on DC.
The third component is the zone controller.
A second zone is the flybridge, and a third zone is the rear berth in the aft-cabin. Those two areas are powered by the Sony head unit itself, and have independant volume controls below the equalizer. There is also provision for an IPod or MP3 connection as well as output to headphones.
The bottom component is a switching bank, that switches not only the stereo components, but also other associated gear, such as the TV UFO antenna amplifier, cell phone power, and other stuff.
The speakers consist of 2 Polk db650s in the stock salon locations, 2 Polk db525s in "speaker balls" in the forward section of the salon, 1 Polk 10" subwoofer behind the sofa in the salon, 2 Polk db400s in the rear berth built into Maple boxes, and a pair of Sony 6.65" speakers of the weatherproof variety on the flybridge.
As I mentioned, I built speaker balls out of fiberglass for the forward salon. Only eerie thing is I think that speaker ball is looking at me as I go to the head.
I gotta show a closeup of the stereo system panel:
I have not yet told the admiral how much this setup cost. I also have at least 200 hours of labor invested in the system. Cutting and polishing all that Corian and building those speaker balls took some time.
I have to still wire in a Terk XM antenna at the radar arch.
With this in mind, here is the current project I am working on - a stereo upgrade.
One goal was to make the system a piece of art as much as a functioning stereo system. So I used solid black Corian as a base to mount all of the components on. When polished to a high gloss, the Corian looks a bit like Onyx.
I went for a heavy-duty industrial-art look, with the Corian and stainless steel handles and hardware.
There are 4 sections to the rack mounted system. The sections can each be removed independantly, and I can upgrade a section at a later date if I wish by simply replacing a Corian section (hopefully it'll be awhile before that happens).
The top section is a multi-function tank monitor, that monitors both fuel tanks, both water tanks, the holding tank, and even the deodorizer tank in the Crown electric head.
It is not part of the stereo system, but I carried the Corian motif over to the tank monitor for a nice matching look.
The first stereo section consists of a Sony head unit with wired remote to the flybridge, wireless remote, and control to a 10CD changer located in the rear-berth closet. Below that is an XM Radio receiver, as well as a 30 LED Vu Meter and equalizer.
I have separated the system into 3 zones, and am using the equalizer as a pre-amp, which is connected to a 4 channel x 40Watt stereo amplifier and seperate subwoofer amp. I don't need a lot of power, so a nice 40Watt per channel system I felt would be decent in the main salon.
To conserve battery power when cruising, we can turn off the salon amplifiers when on DC.
The third component is the zone controller.
A second zone is the flybridge, and a third zone is the rear berth in the aft-cabin. Those two areas are powered by the Sony head unit itself, and have independant volume controls below the equalizer. There is also provision for an IPod or MP3 connection as well as output to headphones.
The bottom component is a switching bank, that switches not only the stereo components, but also other associated gear, such as the TV UFO antenna amplifier, cell phone power, and other stuff.
The speakers consist of 2 Polk db650s in the stock salon locations, 2 Polk db525s in "speaker balls" in the forward section of the salon, 1 Polk 10" subwoofer behind the sofa in the salon, 2 Polk db400s in the rear berth built into Maple boxes, and a pair of Sony 6.65" speakers of the weatherproof variety on the flybridge.
As I mentioned, I built speaker balls out of fiberglass for the forward salon. Only eerie thing is I think that speaker ball is looking at me as I go to the head.
I gotta show a closeup of the stereo system panel:
I have not yet told the admiral how much this setup cost. I also have at least 200 hours of labor invested in the system. Cutting and polishing all that Corian and building those speaker balls took some time.
I have to still wire in a Terk XM antenna at the radar arch.