Tower Speakers, amp & impedence

Looking for some advice on speakers, as I might have goofed already. I'm in the throes of finishing up a sub enclosure for my SAN that will house a Kicker CVR10-4 (http://www.crutchfield.com/S-GgfGdi8hz3m/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?s=0&c=10&g=67600&I=2063C10VR4&o=p&a=0 &cc=01&avf=N&search=) and picked up a Kicker 700.5 amp thinking that would give me flexibility to drive the sub, the 4 boat speakers off one channel and in the not-so-distant future tower speakers off the other channel. The problem is I was computing the RMS WATTS numbers at 2 ohms, but it appears most tower speakers available are 4 ohms. The 700.5 is only 40 WATTS x 4 at 4 ohms, which doesn't look like it'd drive any tower speakers at all. Any thoughts?

4 tower speakers?

4 speakers, exactly what i was gonna say.

Like, wire them in parallel to get them down to 2 ohms? Is that kosher & can you just do that, or is it too hard on speakers? Remember I'm a novice with this stuff. I'd love to pick up some Boss speakers and more than a couple would be great, assuming I've got enough juice to hear them behind the boat!

Joe, I'm running close to the same setup. I have an Orion 7005 pushing four boat speakers running paralell on the two front channels, two tower speakers running standardon the two rear channels, and the same exact sub on the sub channel, however I think the Orion puts out a little more than Kicker if I remember correctly. Correct if I'm wrong.

I wouldn't be suprised if your Orion is more meaty than the Kicker. What speakers do you have on your tower and do they sound ok? Are they 2 ohms or are you running 4 in parallel as mentioned earlier, and how much power are you sending to them?

I have the Sony Explodes 6 1/2"on my tower and they sound pretty good. You can hear a little while riding but nothing very clear. I geared my system to people in the boat and not the rider. The speakers are 4 ohm and Orion claims they are getting approx. 60 watts. My interior speakers are paralell at 4ohms dropped down to 2 ohms and they are probably getting somewhere close to 50 watts a piece. The key is the built in crossovers in the Orion amp. You get alot more sound control.

Ok, you can wire speakers in parallel and cut the impedance in half (if both speakers are the same), and wire them in series and you just add the two impedances. It is not hard on the speakers. Just make sure you aren't putting like 1/2 ohm to your amp as that will spell bad news. Other then that, it should work ok. Just be sure to check your impedances. (If you don't have the tower speakers yet I would use both channels for the boat speakers right now). Also, boss speakers aren't all they are made up to be. If you want some good advice on audio, go to forum.sounddomain.com. They will let you know everything you need to know!

I'm running 4 polk 6x9s in a bat box on my tower. They are powered by a soundstream Ref 404. For in the boat i am using the stock clarion deck and speakers and i am running them along with a JL audio 12" sub under my dash off of a Soundstream ref 705. I use the rear set of preamp outs for the tower and the front set for the cockpit. being able to fad lets you blast the tower without blasting out the people in the boat. I just wired my friends boat in a similar fashion.

You need to do exactly what you thought you should, wire them in parallel. Two 4 ohm speakers in parallel will be running at 2 ohms this way. Four 4 ohm speakers in parallel would be 1 ohm. I doubt your amp can handle 1 ohm.

Starting to sound like I'm going to need to add an extra amp if I want any decent sound out of my tower. Glad I haven't ponied up for those speakers yet!

Joe, can you describe a bit better what your 4 speakers are?

It sounds to me like you have four speakers in the bottom part of the boat, probably came stock. Two on the left, two on the right.

You will need at least two channels of amp to run these: one for left and one for right. If they are 4 ohm speakers and IF the amp is 2 ohm stable you can parallel the left speakers with each other and the right speakers with each other and drive them off of two channels of the amp. You may not want to do this, however, as then you will not be able to balance the front/rear volume.

Some amps require that you bridge two channels together in order to drive 2 ohms. This will obviously cut the number of channels in half.

You may need to use two channels for the sub. If your deck has a dedicated subwoofer output and the amp will handle the impedence of the speaker then only one is required. A more common setup is to bridge the output of two channels and drive the input with "LEFT" and "RIGHT" so that the sub only gets what is common between the two channels.

So, ideally, you would want 4 channels for the interior boat speakers, two channels for the sub and at least two for the tower.

When you add the tower speakers you will

Yep.. the 4 speakers are the stock Clarions that came in vintage ('01) CC's. Probably not a far cry from Spark-O-matics as that's about what they sound like. I'm not sure if they're 2 or 4 ohm but I'm suspect they won't last very long with much additional power. My deck isn't fancy either, Clarion XMD-1. The amp I bought is a Kicker 700.5 and has 5 channels. My original thought was to use 2 channels for the 4 stock speakers, the one sub channel to power my sub and then eventually use the remaining 2 channels for towers. That should give me the ability to fade in/out tower speakers on my deck plus the amp has a separate control for the bass channel. Of course, I didn't think to check ohms for the boat speakers or tower speakers. Silly me!

Anyway, PROBABLY what I'll end up doing for this season is running the boat speakers off the 4 extra channels, at least until they blow and then maybe buy some new, decent boat speaks. Then maybe look into tower speakers and how to power them.

I also have a kicker 700.5 I run my 4 interior speakers plus one sub.My tower speakers run on a kicker 800.2 and everthing sounds really good my tower speakers are the pro audio's from monster tower and they just don,t sound good they rock.

i have my system wired with the boat speakers on the front channel and the tower speakers as rear channel. i've never had a need to lower the volume in the bow seperate from the back of the boat. if i had to do that, i could still turn the tower up or down independently for volume in the back.

speakers aren't that expensive....there are alpine 6.5's at ikesound for $52/pair...(http://www.ikesound.com/product-product_id/1292).

I was going to go with the alpine type s also,but ended up with the kicker k65's how do they sound have you ever heard the kickers.

Sounds like i might be set adding another amp down the road. With two amps, is it possible to control the volume on the second amp (towers) independently?

I'm starting to feel a little bit better about this.

yup, you might need an extra control accessory depending on the amp and head unit. some amps have controls for the level, my rockford fosgate does so i have that for my sub amp. some head units have subwoofer controls that let you adjust the level seperately.

there are also after-market controls that will let you do the same, i don't know much about them.

i think i would try to run the tower @ 2 ohms and the interior boat speakers @ 2 ohms also, and see how it sounds. and then go from there.both on h/pass