Winter DIY Stereo Rebuild
 

It’s been discussed how these types of posts are done much anymore so here’s mine showing there are still people on here getting their own hands dirty.

Over the winter here I’ve been slowly plugging away at rebuilding my stereo. My boat of course came with the OEM WS 10FA and added a second for a period of time but was still wanting more. A couple years back I bought two Orion XTR 12’s with one already in a box which I ran and sounded much better. This year I finally rebuilt a better box under the helm to fit the space as well as built a second box to fit in to the passenger locker. The small openings on either side of the passenger locker made it a bit more of a challenge as to the shape and size of the box. The box stands on its end.

I pulled the garbage can out to become a vent….hated it anyway. I used and modified a cutting board to make the vent out of. I then used a baking drying rack on the back side. The cut out is lined with blue LED’s.

Built an amp rack to mount all of the amps and hide the wiring. Ran 2 – 0 Gauge +/- from the batteries in the rear to provide power. New distribution blocks.

Sub boxes are MDF. Coated the inside polyurethane and the outside is coated in marine paint then carpet. Amp rack and sub panel got the same treatment.

The sub panel took quite a bit of fabrication time. I used a 1” piece of Aluminum to make a ring so I could mount the LED strips on the inside and outside of the ring. Blue in, RGB out with opaque water line. The blue ring is also MDF which I first routered but is mostly hand shaped. Then coated and painted blue.

While I was at it I replaced all of my DIY Speaker rings that I made with WS rings.

Current LED Set up:
-17 Cup holders & Blower Vent- RGB - 1 Controller
-6 Inboats, Sub, and Towers - RGB - 2nd Controller
-Replaced OEM courtesy lights x3, New sub vent (old garbage can location), gunnels above cup holders - All Blue - 3rd switch

Really happy at how it all came out. With the help of my neighbor to tune everything the new set up is pretty damn loud.

:)

;)

looks great! really clean.

Nice how’s she sound

It's pretty damn loud Grant that's for sure. Haven't tested it with the boat running yet but the bass is very solid. I can shake all my neighbor's China cabinets on the cul de sac that's for sure.lol. I'm excited to see if I can make the water boil on either side of the boat.

I've also installed the WS Bluetooth receiver so I can finally be wireless. The thing has amazing range.

It’s weird but the on the trailer by range always seems to be at least 3-4x better than the on the water with the engine running range.

The range of the WS-420BT is a let down. I love every thing else about the 420. But if your not sitting in the drives seat with your phone, the Bluetooth won't reach. Sometimes I can't even hand it to my wife to change the song.

Many forget that blue tooth range is a 2 component deal. The phone is just as guilty for poor range.

With that said, with an android phone, I have gotten 100ft+ with all the Wet Sounds blue tooth devices. Apple phones? 30 ft maybe, and thats line of sight.

^^^^ The only problem with that is I have switch out two different WS-420bt to see if I would get any better range with the Bluetooth. It made no difference

Now with the same phone that doesn't reach 8 feet on the boat. I can use my wife's 30 dollar Bluetooth speaker I bought from Walmart. And I can walk wall the way to the other side of my 3,500 square foot house and it still picks it up fine. That's not line of sight.


And I love Wetsounds and will buy their speakers again for my next boat. But for now I'll just use my apple watch to change the songs while I'm in the water behind the boat. So basically Watch to the phone and then phone to the WS420

Not that it should really matter but I had a regular 420 before the BT option was available so this is what I just added: https://www.wetsounds.com/product/WW-BT-UR

Bluetooth is also only supposed to be 30-50' range.

At this point I wold take 10 feet.