# Help Diagnosing Boat Audio Issues



## Disarmer (Dec 26, 2014)

Last season, we ended with only 4/6 speakers in the boat working. Now that it's about time to pull it back out again, I'm trying to figure out what's up with this audio system. I know this is a car audio forum, but I figured you guys would be my best bet at talking through this with me. 

Setup: 4x coax 6.5's and 1 10" sub inside the boat. 4x 6.5's on the tower up top. In-boat speakers wired down to 2 ohms and run off the front 2 channels. Tower speakers wired down to 2 ohms and run off the rear 2 channels. Subwoofer run off a dedicated sub channel all on a kicker 5 channel marine amp. 

Problem: At the end of last season, the tower speakers were fine, the sub was fine, and 2/4 speakers in the boat were working (both on the left side). Now that I pull it back out, 0/4 speakers inside the boat are working, the sub is working, and I believe the tower speakers are working (but they're not installed currently... not worried about them). 

What I've tried: Tested all 4 channels on the amp to a stand alone speaker using a direct RCA connection to my phone. All channels on the amplifier function correctly. Checked the RCA outputs from the headunit using the aforementioned stand alone speaker on each channel, I get sound from all outputs. Plug it all up, and I just don't get any sound from the 4 speakers inside the boat. 

Is it possible that all 4 of those speakers happened to die at roughly the same time? Is there some kind of wiring issue that could be easily remedied? The amplifier does NOT go into protect, so I don't think there's a short anywhere (although not completely ruled out).

The main problem is that it's extremely difficult to get to the speaker wiring/rear of the speakers, so it would be a very long process to check all of this manually (and I ran out of daylight). Thought I would post here and see if you guys can think of absolutely anything that I missed, or maybe give me suggestions on things to try.

Thank you for any help!


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## Sine Swept (Sep 3, 2010)

Make yourself a speaker popper (I use a 9 volt battery with a momentarily on switch with leads for pos and neg). Unplug the offending speaker leads to whichever speakers arent working and pop them with the above tool. Sure you can use a meter but this will give you a mechanical indication of which speaker is working. If you get no pop chances are your wiring has corroded somewhere.


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## Disarmer (Dec 26, 2014)

For some reason, it never even occurred to me to use the battery trick (I don't own a multimeter). Thanks for the suggestion! I should be able to pinpoint it a bit more from there. Thanks!


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## Disarmer (Dec 26, 2014)

Turned out to be the wiring. Pulled it all and rewired and everything works now. Thanks guys


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## 27hertz (Sep 24, 2015)

Thanks for posting your solution. Too many threads like this are left hanging.


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