Okay, my buddy wants to put some stuff in his boat and I really have no idea here. I'm looking for some help. MY best guess would be to treat it like a convertible automobile which means high efficiency and loads of power.

Now, this has to be rather budget friendly. He has a Sony HU, all I need is some subbass and some CHEAP drivers to handle the rest of it. I will probably go with a line array of some sort running horizontally throughout the boat.

Now, amplifiers is my biggest concern. Being a wet environment, I am wary about this. I know there are marine specific components, but browsing through some, they appear to be nothing more than a traditional component painted white. Is there any real difference here? Any special coatings to prevent corrosion?

This just has to get loud, and have some positive bass reinforcement when tooling around the lake. Nothing more.

Stoe the amps in a water tight area and you should be good. A place where they have their own supply of air to cool themselves but where it is sealed off from the outside. Use overkill power and keep the gains down to keep the amps cool too.

You are correct on treating it like a convertable, If the boat has a tower (fishing ot wakeboarding) it seems to work good to put them above the listener aiming down.

The Kicker KS series Co-Ax has a metal cone and rubber surround and is approved for marine use, I would look into thoes. They sound awsome for the price.

Also remember to not put too much power in there. Most boat alt's (unless it is a big cruiser or something) arent more than 60-80a that I've seen.

Hope I helped some.

Boat alts are really dependent on the boat....on top of that my old boat had a 9kW generator. What sort of boat is it?

The marine stuff is usually just the same with an extra rubber gasket or some other stupid useless chit. Untreated paper would be bad, but I know you are more on top of things than that. Lots of boats have dry compartments or areas that you can mount things in.

As for the wakeboard tower mounting, it is effective for having people near you hear the stereo but does the opposite while you are on plane. My real recommendation is to perhaps even use enclosures that you can move around and take out of the boat with multiple mounting locations. On axis is your friend in a boat and you will see systems with lots of drivers pointing all sorts of different directions, I am not a fan of these but they do fill the boat with sound.

When I finally get a replacement for my 30' dancer, I am probably going to do a couple 18's bandpassed below, with 4 8's and some pro audio compression drivers embedded somewhere for a front stage. If it doesn't sound good enough I might add a "hi fidelity" switch bypassing the horn/8 setup for a more conventional car audio setup giving the best of both worlds. Good tunes for putting around and monster sound for tying up to other boats and drinking. <--- something we do a lot of here.

All of your ideas are pretty much dead nuts on though.

Yes alternators depend on the boat but I'm assumeing this is some sort of run-about or fishing boat. Our bayliner is only 60a and my friends deck boat is only 70a. My dad's chriscraft has and 100a alt on each motor and a 5kw generator. By that is a 29' cruiser.

I don't know what size it is. It's a Chris Craft ski boat. It has a 100 amp Leece Neville on it, and I know all about the electrical side, so that is not to worry about.

Oh yeah, no tower. All speakers, sans subbass, will be in a horizontal line array along either side of the boat. At least that is my initial plan.

Yes alternators depend on the boat but I'm assumeing this is some sort of run-about or fishing boat. Our bayliner is only 60a and my friends deck boat is only 70a. My dad's chriscraft has and 100a alt on each motor and a 5kw generator. By that is a 29' cruiser.

I/O or inboard boats usually have larger alternators than cars that share the same engine to make sure they will start in the middle of the lake/ocean.

What's funny about that chris craft is each engine had its own independant electrical system and there was no way to jump them past manually doing it. Pretty ghey in my opinion.

What's funny about that chris craft is each engine had its own independant electrical system and there was no way to jump them past manually doing it. Pretty ghey in my opinion.

That would be the first cruiser with twins that I have seen with dual alts. I have been in the bilge of a lot of 24-40 foot boats and have never seen dual alts. Obviously there are boats that have them, but strange.