100 watt solar panels would be twice the size of the boat
but a good idea

not the BP ones I have on my house 21x47 inches each

I agree Caps will not help with battery life at all. The easiest way to increas your playing time with out the engien running is to get another battery. Another thing about amps is they are not all the same in the amount that they draw off your battery. Some are MUCH more efficient then others. I can run my Zapco amps all day with out the engine running and so far have not had a problem with starting the engines up even off that same battery.

Jon

So would a 600-750 watt advertised amp give me some boom? should I have other speakers like 6x9's in the system also?....its all to be in the cockpit area which is in a 40' Excalibur Hawk so there is some room for sound to fill....Fred

Fred I am running out the door but I will try and get back to this later this evening

Fred, with the pretty young daughters you have (not to mention their friends)....are you sure you want a booming system in your boat? They will be dancing on the sun pad.....hanging from the arch....attracting all the low life guys in the area!!!!! LOL!!!

In all reality Fred, I have two 10" JL Audio subs running off a Rockford Fosgate Punch 45, and four speakers running off a JBL 4x50 amp. Rocks pretty good.

If you're going to add more than one amp, you need to make sure you have 4 pre-outs on your head unit. If not, you will have to use speaker leads to get to your 2nd amp....some amps will not accept speaker lead inputs. Make sure you don't buy anything you can't use.

Thanks Jon....no hurry, I'll check later in the evening....Fred

On the batteries, what do you do, wire two into a series.

boating fool
the batteries would technically be wired in Parallel. this is with the +'s together, and the -'s together. this doubles the amp-hrs, or volume x time to play the stereo, but the voltage is still 12 volts.

if you wired them in series ( like a 2 battery flashlight for example) you would have 24 volts and get loud music for about 200 milliseconds

deep cycle batteries are better for stereos as they have a larger sustained amperage capacity ( like for a trolling motor)
The starting batteries, obviously, are for starting and can pull higher amps for a short period of time to start the motor.

the ideal setup. a battery switch to separate one starter battery, and one or even two parallel deep cycles for running the radio. the switch allows you to flip back and forth to charge either back up, or use all to start the motor in a pinch.


so audifn what would be your suggested setup
for say $400-500 can you get anything good for that. assume you have a tuner already with preamp out
lets go shopping!!!!


in my case i have a tuner with preamp out,
one 80Wx2 sony (rms at 0.04% THD, a decent one) and two 6 1/2 coax right now

i have a crossover not begin used but found that it clips too much range out of the 6 1/2's even when dialed all the way back. can you buy a pramp crossover that sends full (most of) the signal to the 6 1/2's and then just the sub sonic punch to the subs?


I am looking to add to what i have here this winter also.

Talk to as many people locally, even sume of the younger guys as they usual dont have as much money to spend and can give lots of good ideas and what shops to go to without getting hosed. How much power? I usually try to talk in RMS numbers for the most reliable comparisent from brand to brand. But big or small systems of any real quality I give the mid's and high's the same amout of power as the bass (or lows). This way it wont be overpowerd like somehighschool kids car were the boom is all you hear.
Examples my MasterCraft had one 12" four 5"1/4 and four tweeters. An ADS amp that was RMS 6x66 watts four chanells went to 5's a tweet and two briged to the sub. Metro deck power 4x25 watts to four 4" and four tweeters and Old School Alphasonic 2x25 wattts briged to a 10" in a custom Dual Bandpass box. Acura Legend Boston 6",4", tweet combo and 12" in a custom dual band pass box. that runs on a Old School Rockford Fosgate POWER 650 4 channel 1/2 to the front 1/2 to the sub. Charlie's .02