Well, I needed to install a stereo, where should I put it.

Oh God, I have to cut into my new boat.

Factory new.

When looking for a place to put the stereo, you need to make sure that you have the space to place the stereo and all wiring.

So in this case, I opened the panel (disconnect shore power and batteries while playing in this area) and verified that there was room for the stereo and all cables.

Dont forget you need a place for the antena.

Whats behind that piece of wood

I used the mounting bracket as a template for cutting.

Try to get the cutout so that it is level.

If not, it will be pretty noticable that the stereo is mounted at an angle.

How to mark a template

I used a Roto-Zip to make the cuts, all were done free hand.

A little ragged, but the face plate covers the minor overcuts.

Use a lot of care when using this type of tool, it can get away from you pretty easy.

The other nice thing about using the Roto-Zip is that you can trim or enlarge the cutout very easy.

Can you say Roto-Zip

Well the stereo is in, now on to the speakers!

Quick note, the instructions for the stereo were very clear cut and easy to follow.

Remember that you usually need to connect a memory lead to the batteries, this keeps the station pre-sets when you shut down power to the stero.

Also remember to keep the positive and negative speaker leads marked, pretty easy to get reversed, just pay attention.

Power and ground were easy because of being in the pannel.

The only other thing is to make sure that you have enough cable length to open and close the pannel with the cables dressed in (ty wrapped to the cable harness)

The speaker connections were soldered and then wrapped with electricians tape, the power and ground leads used crimped on connectors.

Taaa Daaa

This is the cutout for the port interior speaker.

The Roto-Zip did a good job, but since it was a blind cut and I didnt know how much material I was cutting through, this was a tough cut.

This one hurt....

This is what I had to cut through.

Notice that it was a little jagged, remember that the speaker covers will hide both the scratches and the cutout.

On the Starboard side, I taped off the wood and did not get any scratching.

Also since I knew what I was cutting through the time to cut was shortened by about 2/3.

A close up of the one that hurt

This is how the speakers look when finished.

I used the Bose 131s on the inside and exterior speakers.

The speaker wire was really easy to run.

I ran them from behind the panel down to the port settee, inside the settee to the bulkhead through the hole for the AC power cable and into the hanging locker and up to that speaker.

The other cable then went through the hanging locker (drilled a hole into the v-berth, use extreme caution as you can drill into the water tank).

I then ran the cable to the starboard side and into the locker through the water shut off access.

There is a piece of molding that I was able to hide the hole from the locker into the v-berth and then ran the wire to the speaker.

Very easy job to do.

You will need a coat hanger to fish the wire from the settee into the hanging locker.

The wiring took about 20 minutes to install.

Inside speakers done

This doesnt look too bad.

Take a look at the next photo if you want to see what made a grown man cry.

Port exterior speaker

There wasnt enough room to put a Bose 131 between the exterior and the interior molded lazarette. I had to cut the access for the speaker from the inside and then fit the speaker before cutting the exterior hole.

This was a major PITA, all told, this speaker took about 4 hours to cut and install.

I now know why the dealer recommended putting the speaker in the pedistal.

But no, I wanted quality sound, damn the effort.

So overall a major job, I have to glass in the back side of the speaker, or build some type of housing to protect the speaker.

Again, the Roto-Zip was a god send for this job.

I dont know that a jig saw would have worked well as I must have cut out about 20 small pieces to get this oveall cutout.

Can you say butcher

This is what it looks like when done.

The starboard speaker took about 5 minutes to install.

This was the speaker I was worried about as the lazarette is where the propane locker is.

There was a huge amount of space to place the speaker from the rear.

Because of the mounting location of the port side speaker, the speaker grills had to be trimmed to fit due to the curve where they are mounted.

This added to the overall installation time, but not dramatically so.

Exterior speakers finished

This is the remote control that I mounted in the pedistal.

Very easy to install (cut one hole) and a god send when you need to cut the volume or increase it to drown out the jet skis.

I had an infrared control on my last boat and it was not the best solution.

I feel that this is.

Hard Wired Remote Control

We moved the VHF from the companion way to the pedistal.

This also shows the remote control and tachometer as mounted.

Pedistal

This is the remote control cable.

When we pulled the cables from the panel, we pulled the two speaker cables, the VHF Coax, the remote control cable and a messager line for pulling the power cables at a later time. These were all pulled at the same time

This was the easiest cable pull I have ever made in a boat.

There is a conduit from the panel to the aft end of the boat.

I dont recall if it is a 1 or 2 inch conduit, but boy it made life much simpler.

Thanks Hunter!

You pulled that How?

This is the view from the aft berth through the access panel to the tankage area.

On the left side of the picture is the holding tank, on the right is the diesel tank.

This made the installation of the starboard speaker extremely easy as I could reach up and place the speaker in the cutout.

Overall, running all of the wires were very easy.

Cutting the boat, made me weep.

The overall sound quality makes me smile.

This is a weekend job that can be done by anyone who has confidence in thier abilities with power tools and uses common sense to verify what is behind where they are cutting.

On the beer scale (only after the cutting and drilling is done), this one is a case with a bottle of the strong stuff to follow after the cutting is done.

More Access than ever before