Axis Wakeboard Boat Forum

wanted to share my experience with replacing the factory (MB400/MC-30) sound system that came in my T23. I bought the boat used but it came with SP2. While installing the new system, i uncovered some things that i really wasn't thrilled about.

Factory SP2 seems to have the following setup.

HX-6:

- channel 1/2 - center and stern speakers connected in parallel (right left split) at 2 ohms.
- channel 3/4 - bow speakers at 4 ohms
- channel 5/6 - bridged to the sub at 4 ohms

HX-2:

- channel 1/2 - 4 tower speakers connected in parallel (right/left split) at 2 ohms 2 Amps.

While the amps are rated to run 2 ohms per channel, I'm not a big fan of parallelling speakers or mismatched channels on the same amp.

For the control head, I was able to carefully slowly cut the silver dash trim ring enough to maintain integrity in the plastic AND allow the controller to be mounted in it. I also had to use a scrap piece of aluminum to make the mounting bracket work.

I ran new speaker wires form the stern speaker pair to the amplifiers. i also ran two additional wires in the tower speakers. I added a Kenwood XR900.5 that was laying around unused. I'm using 4 channels to run the tower speakers. The HX-6 is running the 6 cabin speakers, the HX-2 is bridged and running the sub. Basically, i added a spare amp so that every speaker is on its own amp channel. Yes, i know the Kenwood isn't "waterproof" But, FREE (and a damn good amp) trumps the cost of replacing the HX-2 for another HX-6. Also, i decided to keep the HX-2 to run the sub because it has more RMS power than the 5th (sub) channel on the XR900.5. If the Kenwood had the same power rating on the sub channel, i could have just ditched the HX-2 and ran all 5 channels of the XR900.5.

I ended up using all 4 zones of the MC-1. I do like that the HX-6 allows you to link 2 4 or all 6 channels to a single input. So, Zone 1 is running the 6 cabin speakers. Zone 2 is running the Sub. And, zone 3 and 4 were used on the Kenwood amp (since you can't link the outputs to one input...and i didnt want to use an RCA splitter) to run the 4 channels for the towers.

I kept the timer circuit in play (nice option since the MC-1 takes a few seconds to boot up). The timer is located on the back side of the panel that the amps are bolted to. Since the MC-1 maintains all of its settings when all power is lost, i chose to tie the constant hot and ignition wire on the MC-1 to the timed 12 volts line. This way, when i kill the main power switch, the radio cant continue to pull power. The black box remote lines were used for the amps.

I made a schematic of what the factory stereo wiring looks like.

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Small update. With both the ignition and battery wire tied to the timer circuit, when the timer timed out, the entire stereo would do a "hard" shutdown. This resulted in a loud, high pitched squeal and pop form all speakers. Thinking that the radio needs to do a "softer" shutdown i decided to run the battery wire to a main (switchable) battery connection. Radio works perfect now! Now, when you turn the ignition off and the timer runs its course, the MC-1 actually runs its normal shutdown sequence. No pops, no squeals.