Had to break up my posts since I was on my phone before now. The Kenwood head unit is marine, it is actually 2 parts. The stereo is mainly a face plate and my Ipod will go inside it which is a waterproof enclosure to protect my Ipod. The other half is a hideaway unit which is actually where the amp and electronics are. I like how it doesn’t need to be in one of those cases like most other units. I also got a wired remote for it that I will mount by the dashboard on the drivers side. I didn’t like having to tell my wife and kids to turn it up, or turn it down, or skip this song, etc. all the time. So I fixed that! It hasn’t came in yet so it isn’t in the picture.
Some advice I have found over the years. Save yourself some money and get on Ebay. I wont buy from anyone with less than 500 rep points and less than 98% positive feedback. If someone has something for say $175 and has a score of 98.5% and the next guy has a 100% but wants $180 I will buy the one that is $180. I also love the word refurbished. All my Dewalt tools are refurbs and never a problem but saved myself $500 over buying new. Everything in that picture cost me $1175 total. The amps and tower speakers are refurbs which saved me a ton of money and all still have warranty. The Phoenix Gold amp I bought off a local listing site for $50. Phoenix used to be really good stuff so I thought for $50 it was worth a try. Try and look mid range price level unless money is no object. Cheap is just that, cheap. Avoid the Walmart Sony Explode stuff. High end is just that, high end and you get what you pay for. I don’t have that kind of funding so I tried to get the best I could for what I could afford. This is where doing your homework comes into play. All the major components I got off of Ebay and NONE of them is below top grade quality but not necessarily very top of the line except the sub which is top of the line.
What I did is I built me a spreadsheet on Excel and I spent a good week just looking on the net at manufacturer sites and on ebay. I copied and pasted the links, put a description and price of each. I had already thoroughly went thru the boat to decide on what I could put where. I then made a list of what I wanted where and started copying and pasting in the different components until I had the price I wanted to be at with components I was satisfied with. Once that was done the wallet started to smoke. I then drew up a wiring chart that illustrated all the wires I was going to need and made a trip to Best Buy. The wiring diagram will help you not forget any wires you will need and you get down to the last wire and you don’t have it. FRUSTRATING!!
Best Buy…..lived up to its name this time for me. They were having a clearance sale on all of their Rockford Fosgate wiring. Long story short, they had someone that didn’t have a clue do their pricing and I ended up with all their high end stuff for dirt cheap. About $275 worth of stuff and I walked out paying $78 after taxes!! Example. The Capacitor in the pic has a reg price of $145.00 and is their top 1 farad model. I bought it for $35 and they had the low end one sitting next to it on clearance to and they wanted $89.99 for it LOL. Yah they don’t have a clue!
I hope this help you some Woman2Blame! Any questions, just hollar, be glad to help you find stuff or anything. Foster I think knows his stuff from what I can see as well as some others I have seen here so I think your at the right place!
