2012 Supra Tower Speakers
 

i have a question regarding the 2012 supra polk speakers on the tower! are they horn loaded drivers like wetsounds or exile? how do they perform compared to the high end brands like wetsounds and exile??

I have not seen them or heard them myself, but there is no way they will be horns. They will be better than the the average speaker for sure, but would not be a comparison to an Exile or Wetsounds horn I doubt. If you are looking for a horn, then I would order your boat without speakers and contact Exile or Wetsounds to buy a pair. I am actually in the middle of the same thought process in my head and will probably elect to order some Exiles outside of the purchase of the boat. The new Polk speakers are supposed to be much better than previous Kenwood or Kicker speakers that were in there.

The Polk Audio MM series are good sounding speakers. Smooth. Nice for in the boat listening. But from a sensitivity and output standpoint they are only equal to the standard automotive style coaxial.
Two pair properly powered are enough to function as surf speakers and that is about it. Also keep in mind that these are an infinite baffle speaker designed for the expansive car door or coaming cavities that are now being placed in a small pod. So if your objective is to hear music, not just some sound, at wake range with any degree of intelligibilty then you really want to run HLCDs on the tower.

David
Earmark Marine

Does anyone know what amp comes stock in the 21v for the interior speakers now that they are using polk instead of kicker. I know in the past it was a kicker 200.4.

ok thanks for that... looks like thats what i'll do, i'll just get them to pre wire the tower and have it ready to accept 4 tower speakers and then i'll just get a light bar seperate!

my next question i forgot to add was.. will the exile/wetsounds speakers work with the z5 rack? i would like to get 4 speakers and lights! this will be on a progressive tower! Anyone done this?? Pics?

cyclone - no issues with the Exile's mounting up there. I was curious myself and did a little measuring. Additionally, the Z5 is adjustable, I'd think most brand speakers would fit. It's going to come down to what type of performance your looking for on your tower.

If you've got any questions on Exile gear, hit me up or give us a call at the office.

-Brian
Exile Audio

schweet. thanks mate! has anyone on here done a similar thing to my idea with having a set of hlcd tower speakers and run tower lights aswell?

Anthony,
Its very effective to mount the tower lights over the top of the tower on slightly forward extensions that remove the light bar from the pylon and rope plus provides a little elevation. Otherwise its hard for the radiation from forward facing lights to clear the front of the hardtop when the boat is squated and pulling. Even if you are not concerned with forward facing lights this makes more space available for speaker placement. We also built a rear facing three-lamp bar that is only 16.5" total width which allows for more speaker room. Its very tight for four speakers and a light bar mounted to the same tube.

David
Earmark Marine

Anthony
The Exiles will definitely fit.... Here is a pic of mine from last year. The Wetsounds will probably hang lower, which means you will have to lower your Z5. The Z5 is adjustable, but depending on how low (headroom) you want it and if you will fold your tower each night, you will want to take this into serious consideration. As you lower or raise the Z5 you change the mounting points on the tower legs and that in turn changes the way the tower folds. Hope that makes sense. Here are pics. I do not have lights, but in the past, I did take a light bar and mount it above the tower. With the Z5 you will definitely need to mount them above to clear the Z5. You might just consider getting docking lights instead.

And, there is no reason you can't install the speakers on the rear larger tube versus the front smaller tube. The rear position elevates the speakers slightly, positions them farther from the cargo top and moves them back a little farther so there is a little less tower radiation to the in-boat occupants.

David
Earmark Marine

You can do what David says or even do a hybrid of having two on the front and two on the back. If you do 4 on the rear larger tube you will want to get the swivel clamps so you can swivel them a bit to keep them even. Otherwise they follow the bend of the tower and look weird. If you do two on the front and two on the back you don't need the swivels. Here is a set up I had years back.... The top of the tower is still essentially the same.

Tyler,
A few towers have a staggered position buit in. Sometimes its just unavoidable and we have absolutely done this before out of necessity, however, avoid a staggered tower set-up IF you can. At a given front/rear offset related to that wavelength and frequency you will get out-of-phase cancellations and a resulting suck-out in the response.

David
Earmark Marine

Tyler - Great advice. You got a new Supra coming for next year? I haven't seen your new colors yet...

Brian
In the works. If so, will probably be hitting you up to get some equipment to make it rock.

ok thanks for that guys.. yeah the docking lights sound like a good option! do forward facing tower lights do much for night time navigation? or are they just pretty?

oh and by the way tyler your boat is sick!!

Anthony
The forward facing tower lights are just pretty more than anything. They really don't help night navigation much and they are not legal for navigating. Neither are docking lights really. Some of the new lights out now are HID and they look like they would light up the water, but they are expensive. I feel I can see better with just plain old light from the moon than any lights I have seen and you may be drawing attention from the po po.....

Too much forward facing light off the tower at night can reflect off the bow and actually impede your vision, especially if the boat is squatted a bit and the bow is raised. But they do look pretty in any case.

David
Earmark Marine

After looking at all the pics there is plenty of room for multiple lights.The new led lights are super small put out tons of light and have very little draw. The Vision X lights are spendy $150 each plus another $30 a clamp from DIY wake but each one is equal to two 50 watt halogen lights.I had the same problem lots of speaker with not much space left for lights.Sorry the pics are not of the supra tower but they will give you an idea of how small a space they can be mounted in.

geez, they are small! they look similar to the hid lights bakes have on their website! they might be the answer i think h20king! looking at the pics of tylers boat it looks like if he had his speakers on the back hoop it would alloy them to go maybe two on the front hoop and two on the rear hoop! i think im just gunna have to buy the boat and see lol

h20king, i had a look on the visionx website and tried finding the lights you had shown in the pictures.. i see that it says XIL-SP100 Series on the front but is that the actual model of those lights or is that just the series they belong to? any feedback would be greatly Appreciated!

Here is a link to the lights and clamps. They are the solstice solo prime lights and can also be set up with the optional dimmer control hope this helps.
http://visionxsuperstore.com/2SolsticePrimeLEDPod.aspx
http://www.diywake.com/shop/shopexd.asp?id=550

sweet.. thanks mate!

Anthony,
I had 4 exiles sxt65s on my supra tower and added a Roswell c6 light bar. Everything fit perfectly and I can send you pix if you like.

FWIW, I sold the supra and have no need for the light bar. If still in the market, my c6 light bar is in the classifieds on deep discount and like-new

yeah pics would be great! thanks

harold, do you have pics of how bright those tower lights are?

Several photos. They are super bright. I don't have any pix on the water, but there's pix 1 is lights on, pic 2 lights off from the dock. Pix 2 also shows the cool blue glow of the ambiance light from the light bar. Pix 3 & 4 show the tower mount - sorry, no great close ups.

For reference, my dock is 70' long. That white fence is likely 90', the house 120'

Holy **** man thats nuts! they r so bright! light bar looks sweet too!

They're up for sale. Let me know if you're interested. They don't mate well with my new boat and the supra is gone.

oh ok, what did you get?? pics? yeah i would deffinately be interested if i had a boat and even more important... Money lol i seem to suffer that disease real bad haha