West Marine XXLs

Another post prompted me to take a couple of shots of my setup. The mounts are ghetto but I'm working on it. I've got 'em wired in series so they show a 4 ohm load to the amp (150 watts x 2 @ 4 ohm). Sorry the pics suck but I'm using a $40.00 digital camera...

how do they sound?

ghetto? looks pretty tight to me!

They sound great. I have a pair and they are the best value I have found!

Want them to sound even better? Replace the tweeters (which blow really easily) with some better speakers - I used Polk Audio.

I am running 2 sets too!•••••••• one set I am running Pyramid 8" woofers and eclipse 5 inch mids instead of tweeters. The other pair is stock west marine stuff. Will be putting Mb quart components into the west marine boxes once the stock stuff blows up. Blew up 3 sets of the west marine stock tweeters last summer. One question about your setup. Running them in a series increases the ohms, parallel decreases the ohms. At least that is what I have read all along.

Here is a link where I get all my speaker wiring info. Very helpful. http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/caraudio.htm

Bobd you know you can drive them with 600 watts rms right? Each one is rated to 150 rms X 4 = 600 LOUD watts. Im still wating to replace my spare new set with tweeters, ive already got the phoenix gold subs. Finally ran the wire through the tower after going all last year with it running up the side of the tower. Man i was really getting frustrated since it sure didnt go as easy as everyone seemed to make it and i did the shop vac thing, still was a big pain in the arse.

Bill J how much power are you sending them?

Actually I'm not using them anymore - the stock bracket broke and I decided I wanted a nicer looking speaker so I replaced them with some aluminum cans from Ryno-Gear.com.

I was powering them with 360watts x 1 channel @ 4ohms.

Andrew - You're right, I am running them in parallel (Doh!).

I've read all the stories about blowing out the tweets so I'm prepared for that, I'll use 'em up and then swap out the drivers as needed.

Billj - cool mod. I opened up the case & the woofer is not real stout either, so I thought I might swap it out later too if need be - although I certainly can't complain right now. I got these last fall for $99.00 a pair so the bang for the buck is huge.

Bob - I plan on pumping up the power to them later on but I'm using the amp I've got right now. All it takes is money brutha...

Let's see some pics from you guys that are using these speaks...

Here is a link to pics of the XXL's I just installed.
http://forums.wakeboarder.com/viewtopic.php?p=75648#75648

Try some Niles Audio OS-25's......Rated at 4ohms instead of normal 8 ohms.....these really rock too! I got mine off of E-Bay.

Why would I want to pay twice the price for half the speaker?

Why would I want to pay twice the price for half the speaker?

Here's are pics of mine. I originally had them below, but now have them above to clear the bimini.

Keith do they shake alot with that mount?

The only problem I had with replacing the tweeters with the normal car speakers is that stock woofer is 8 ohms and the car speakers (eclipse in my situation) were 4 ohms. The woofers were not getting as much power as the eclipse so the eclipse were running much louder then the woofers. This made for some pretty loud highs and some pretty quiet mids. If I were you, if and when your stock speakers blow I would replace the woofer and tweeter with a set of 6 inch mb quart components. You can get them off ebay for 120 or so. I will have some pics on sunday after I install the 2nd amp and the 2nd set of speakers. As far as power is concerned, I was putting 200 watts rms into the stock speakers and the capacitors in the speaker box actually exploded. I am going to back down on the amp this season and see what happens.

A buddy of mine and myself tried those out last year. Other than their size and (lack of) style they were pretty good overall speakers. In the VLX they were a head smacker! Couldn't mount them on top due to the additional rack.

XXL's on 2001 Malibu Response LX


XXL's on a 2002 Malibu VLX

I dont think they lack style at all. They are not chrome plated several thousand dollar speakers, but I think they look good espically on that VLX!
One way I thought about mounting them is on the side pillars faceind back... But I am short and can clear them. If you are tall its just your punishment

One thing I like about the way these mount is if we are just chilling & swimming around, you can rotate one or all speaks down toward the boat/water or spin them all the way around & point them toward the front if you want.

They are great speakers for the price. I don't hit my head on my speakers because my towers is higher then most for some odd reason. (zero flex). They sound great, and are very versitile. I abused mine with too much power and that is why they cooked. My buddy ran his at reasonable levels all summer and had no problems. I just wanted to keep seeing how loud I could get them to go and for some reason wanted to hear the music miles away.

Craig, they are solid - no shakes.

Keith,
Where did ya get the mounts?

Craig, Check out www.rynogear.com. Yep another WW member with a great product. Sean M just got another set of brackets for his Niles OS10’s on his Calabria. He is running 4 speakers on the tower like the first pic on this post. I know he posted a pic of it, but can’t remember what thread.

Note that the newest mounts are a bit more rounded that the ones in the pic above.

Are those mounts the ones that are like $200?

200 huh? Just checked the website… looks like they range from 149-169.

My bad. I still cant pay more for mounts than I did for the speakers, it seems wrong...

Buy one set of brackets and mount them to a flat aluminum bar. Buy a second set of speakers and install a total of 4 speakers to the bar. Now you can just take down all of your speakers attached to the same 2 mounting brackets.

There you go… spent more on your “speakers” than you did on the brackets.

Just testing my logic before I run it past ‘the boss’

Thats pretty good!

I used muffler brackets from the auto parts store. All you have to do to take the speakers off is unscrew the speaker endcaps that hold them in the speaker bracket. The muffler brackets hold them perfect, looks great and only cost 1 buck each.