2008 22ve Tower vibration - E-Series

[hawkeye41115]

Recently purchased a 2008 Tige 22ve with the E-Series tower. Noticed quite a bit of vibration (not wabble) at cruising speed. I checked all of the handles and made sure that they were tight. See no visible cracks or failed welds.

Is the vibration something that I will need to learn to live with or are there other connection points that need to be checked and properly tightened?

Also - need recommendations for the following items for tower:

1. Bimini Top - previous owner towed boat with top extended and ruined top
2. Tower speakers - previous owner removed them prior to trading in to dealer

[BrentP]

My tower squeaks like a son of a b..... I don't know how you would define a vibration vs a wobble, but in heavy water it'll shake side to side a bit (But not so much it worries me). I've considered some lubrication measures on the joints - I figure you cant stop the wobble/vibration.

Bimini - There are a few places people have been mentioned (Sewlong, etc) that have the template already. If you happen to be in Central Texas, I'd be happy to meet you at the local canvas shop and they can use mine as a template. If you at least have the canvas still, a sail shop can copy it and get you supports for it (Just give them measurements from the mount points on the tower)

Tower Speakers - Get ready for opinion city on this. I'll give my high level - I went with 9" kicker HLCD tower speakers. They fit my cost model and sounded better to me then the WS REV10s to my ear. That being said, the REV10s are the standard. All the boat shops here swear by the JL Audio towers (M6 is current I think). Honestly - what are you trying to accomplish? Float and jam? Wakeboarders can sing along? Wake surfer has some background noise? How much money do you want to spend? Give CHPThril (Mike) that data, he'll make some recommendations. Big decision point: How big a speaker do you want for mid-bass, and do you want HCLD or standard tweeter (Loudness and range vs fullness of highs). I didn't want too big - I already crush my head on the speakers as it is... But i'm 6'5" too so take that with a grain of salt.

If you want to stock 6'5" cans, I'll send you mine but they need new speakers in them - 13 years is hard on speaker foam.

[hawkeye41115]

BrentP - Thanks for the advice on all of the topics. My rattle / vibration is evident and its audible at higher speeds. I just did a walk around on the boat and found the shaft on the port bow side could be slid about 1/8th of an inch. I tightened the smaller hex bolt that was loose 3-4 full turns and that secured the shaft. We will see if that fixes the vibration.

Bimini - Has anyone used a group called Tower Biminis ? Pricing seems to be decent at just below $1k for the complete top. Not sure if that's the going rate but it doesn't sound too bad.

Tower Speakers - Let me provide a little more information to help dial in my needs because quite honestly I'm not a stereo guy and don't even know where to begin. Just walked the boat and these are the components that exist:

Clarion CMD5 Stereo
Kicker ZX350.4 4-channel amp
Kicker ZX700.5 5-channel amp
Wet Sound Speakers x 5 (2 in bow, 1 behind capts chair, and 2 in main cabin seating area)
Wet Sounds Sub under captains feet compartment
Tower Speakers - Missing but wiring is there and ready to plug and play for two tower speakers

Have no clue why there are two Amps - anyone?
Is this a stock setup for an 08 22ve or did previous owner add a few upgrades already?

Needs:
Bluetooth - CDM5 says there is a bluetooth adapter but is it worth buying the adapter vs upgrading the deck?
Tower Speakers - Not looking for anything that will blow the doors off, just feel there should be sound coming from towers and want to cover the holes where the wire is protruding.

Will eventually do:

Full upgrade including wiring when we decide that we are either keeping this boat or trading up (2 years timeline).

[BrentP]

Yah, the tower should NOT move at the mount point to the boat. Good call on tightening. I may do the same for mine...

On the stereo:

That sounds stock. There should actually be a 6th speaker up next to the sub under the helm.... (6 total in boat)

My boat came with the same Amps, but Kicker speakers in the boat (with separate woofers and tweeters). they may have moved to WS Speakers in 2008. Mike would also know that.

The 4 channel amp probably ran the tower speakers (1 speaker per 2 channels bridged), and the 5 channel ran the in boats and the sub.

I replaced the head unit with a Clarion M508 because I wanted built in blue tooth - better range, better control from the remotes around the boat. I still ended up installing a Wetsounds zone controller when I did my full upgrade to control the tower volume, sub volume, and in-boats separately. There are many options for bluetooth including simple dongles that work fine.

I'll let mike comment on tower speakers. Simple 6.5" Cans will make sound all day - the price of tower speakers ranges wildly. Make sure whatever you buy has the mounts for the tower included. Sometimes those can bump you into a different price range.

I'd sit down an noodle over how much money you want to spend long term and what the plan is. No reason to spend 300-400 bucks on tower speakers knowing in a year you may want to buy thousand dollar tower speakers. But the 300-400 dollar ones probably sound great for floating (just not great for throwing sound back to person towed behind the boat)

Good luck man!