$1500 to spend on stereo upgrades - any recommendations?

[luckee37]

I have a 05 SAN and am looking to make some upgrades and am looking for recommendations. I currently have the stock Polk Momos (MM651?) throughout. Several of them are blown. My current plan was to re-use the Polks for the internal speakers and add a new AMP and tower speakers. Any recommendations for keeping the costs reasonable?

So far, I had one recommendation for a Polk 1100.5 amp ($370 on Amazon).

If I were to spend up to $1100 to replace the tower speakers, what would you recommend? Can/should I reuse the existing stock cans or get an entirely new setup?

Thanks!

[TurboFan]

what tower cans do you have currently?

[luckee37]

I believe they are the stock cans that came from the factory (I'm the second owner). i've attached some pics - sorry that the orientation is off.

[TurboFan]

I'm on a similar quest - upgrade the audio without a wholesale replacement of the whole mess. I emailed with David at Earmark and did quite a bit of research. It seems that replacing the stock drivers in the cans with HLCD's and giving them a dedicated amp will give you a great deal of bang for your buck.

If you want to improve the sound in the boat, redeploy the remaining factory amps to power the boat speakers and the sub. Then put the sub into a proper enclosure. All in I'd think you'd be around $1500-$1800 in parts.

[luckee37]

Turbofan - it indeed does sounds like we are on similar quests. What do you have in mind for a "proper enclosure" for the sub? How much of a difference might this make, over and above the existing polk enclosure that it comes in?

[TurboFan]

Worlds of difference. The enclosure of the sub, and proper venting into the boat, is just as important as the amp you use, probably more so. It's far more important than what driver you have.

To get a 3dB increase in sound, you have to double the power. You can get at least that much from going to a proper enclosure. If you look at Earmark, they have bandpass boxes designed for marine applications. A properly designed bandpass box will give you a 3 dB gain over stock, easily. According to David, venting the port locker through the cooler door can give you 5-6dB in gain, effectively quadrupling your power. You can't acheive that with amps on a boat, not easily anyway. It's nice that the boxes are relatively cheap and will help your sub last longer. They're modding my cooler door into the port locker to help radiate sub energy into the boat. I could probably do it myself, but they've done more of these than I have, so it's on them to get it right!

I went with 2 pair of PRO696's to fit into my 4 factory 6x9 cans, replacing the stock drivers. The power-hungry tower will now be fed with a Syn2 amp. I will use the 280 bridged to power the sub, and the 480 to power the boat. This gets the boat speakers off the headunit, which is always a good thing. I'm expecting great things. My whole package was only a couple hundred over your budget, but if you only need PRO60's, you might be closer to your budget. You could also mod the locker door yourself and be in budget I suspect.

[Bimmerboyz]

What he said ^^^^.

[sjames]

I will have a JL marine 750 Mono AMP for a sub for sale in a few days. Changing a few things on my 2006. Amp is semi-new played 1 day in the boa, bought or rather was sold the wrong one