Rev 10 paint peeling away

[BrentB]

The paint (black) on my Rev 10 tower speakers is peeling away. Last summer it was minor, this summer it is getting bad. Looks terrible. Paint is just flaking right off. Boat was kept in climate controlled storage all winter.

Does Wet Sounds warranty this? Anyone else had this problem.

For the most part, I’ve not been overly impressed with the Wet Sounds system. In my opinion they sound okay when played very loud, but at low/intermediate volumes they’re just average. Not a fan of the horn loaded compression drivers (sounds like a PA speaker).

Definitely prefer the JL’s in my buddy’s Nautique.

[Ironrequiem]

My 17 Z1 did the same thing on Rev 10's, Marine Max turned it in to Tige and Tige doesn't cover it. Myself and Marine Max had to contact Wet Sounds and they stated they had a bad batch of Rev 10's that were flaking and peeling. Wet sounds sent out 2 Rev 10 housings only to me and I had to breakdown old install into new housings.
Not a hard task, better option than bringing to dealership and being without a boat for a while.
It does seem as a majority of us are willing to do our own warranty labor rather than have to drive 1,2 or more hours to dealership and be without boat for a period of time.

[BrentB]

Thanks. I’ll try contacting Wet Sounds.

Has anyone tried replacing the Rev 10s with JL audio tower speakers (such as the M6-880VTXv3)?

I’m wondering if the LED lighting in the JLs would respond in the same way as the REV 10s without having to change anything.

[chpthril]

If the speakers were factory installed and the boat is under warranty, your Tige dealer would be the first call. I also suggest this because I do know Tige did some custom coatings.

An HLCD is a purpose-built speakers, to naturally the compression driver is going to be dominant. However, they can be cooled off through tuning.

[sandm]

Brent, with ya on all fronts.
I want to try a pair of jl's or kickers on the tower and it looks like it would just be a matter of drilling the proper holes in the cans to hang them but no one local has any tower speakers to see how the cans are formed/mounts to see if I can modify a pair. not willing to shell out the coin to try a pair and be out....
I suspect icon8's are in my future as that seems to be the easiest solution.

I don't care for the "brightness" of the rev's either and although chp mentions tuning, still don't like the overall sound. back when I used to work at circ city, there's a reason I had infinity and polk speakers in the house over klipsch. really don't like the sound from a horn loaded driver.... well that and polk had some HELLA incentives for mgrs.....

[BrentB]

Brent, with ya on all fronts.
I want to try a pair of jl's or kickers on the tower and it looks like it would just be a matter of drilling the proper holes in the cans to hang them but no one local has any tower speakers to see how the cans are formed/mounts to see if I can modify a pair. not willing to shell out the coin to try a pair and be out....
I suspect icon8's are in my future as that seems to be the easiest solution.

I don't care for the "brightness" of the rev's either and although chp mentions tuning, still don't like the overall sound. back when I used to work at circ city, there's a reason I had infinity and polk speakers in the house over klipsch. really don't like the sound from a horn loaded driver.... well that and polk had some HELLA incentives for mgrs.....

The Icon 8s look interesting. We mainly surf and swim (very little wakeboarding) so I don’t really need or want the controlled dispersion and higher efficiency that a HLCD affords. I find the harshness unpleasant at normal listening levels. I much prefer the wider dispersion and more “natural” sound of a standard tweeter.

Have you heard the Icon 8s and been able to compare to the Rev 10/8s?

I don’t know if I would actually bother swapping them out, but would maybe consider it if I could sell my Rev 10s in the off season (assuming I can get the defective shells replaced).

[sandm]

i had 4 icon8's on my first tige 22ve. installed in winter 2013 and sold boat in 2017. loved them. they are not the loudest on the lake but surfing and sandbar they were all we needed. powered by an arc audio ks300.4 iirc. had a 600.amp as well but I think it powered inboats. been too many birthdays since I installed it.

last z3 had 4 rev10's on either a ws or jl amp. that boat had a stupid large system with 4 amps that I didn't install and never got around to troubleshooting some static in the bow and a $hit headunit from jl. the rev's are stupid loud and sound too "bright". the icon's sound much more musical. again all imo....

I am trying to figure out if we can make either kicker or JL work on our alpha m2 tower as I really want to try a different brand but if we are not successful or end up copping out on the WS route we will run icon's again. revs are just not needed if all you do is surf and last time I towed a boarder was 2016. I'm intrigued with the 8.8" jl and 8" kicker offerings.

if I already had rev's installed I'd have just left em as we did on the z3 but this boat didn't come with tower speakers so we get to pick what we want.

for some reason I thought I remember some chatter about WS offering up a standard speaker/tweeter in the rev10 cans but apparently that never materialized. that would be the ultimate for us. 10" driver in a can and standard tweeter but something tells me that's too large a woofer for a small dome tweeter to compete with. CHP might know more about why it never came about.

[BrentP]

I will say I stewed over this a TON. When it was all said and done I couldn’t find a combination of JL equipMent I liked at a price point and light setup I liked. I also did not like the REV10 - I didn’t like the sound or the cost of the mounts and stuff.

I ended up going for Kicker 9” HCLD - they were way more mellow then the WS with Better bass and throw then the JL. We do 75% of our listening at low speed or floating - not throwing noise at wakeboarders.

FWIW....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[chpthril]

Matching the tweeter is the easy part, its the pod displacement thats the hard part. While driver surface area is a huge factor in creating mid-bass or bass, the enclosure volume is just as much as a factor. A small tower pod robs the mid-bass. This can be demonstrated by listening to two virtually identical speakers, but one in a pod and the other running infinite-baffle like an in-boat. I can do this on my displays with the Icon-8 and Revo-8 and the KM8 and KMTC8. Crossed over the same, you can hear how pod effects the mid-bass.

My Wet Sounds display is currently running a WS-220, but when I had a WS-420SQ on it, I always ran the tower zone EQ with the far left knob one click clock wise and far right knob one or two clicks counter clock wise. This took the edge off the horn.

Icons to Rev-8, icons win sound quality hands down. Icons to rev-10? IMO, its a toss up. Up close, the Rev does have a little more aggressive tweeter. Whats interesting though, most or my customers are surfers or party'rs. After demo'ing the the icon-8 and rev-10 side by side, we install more rev-10. Used to be 5-1, but its narrowed in the past couple seasons though.

[SONIC]

My last boat had Kicker 8" tower speakers and they sounded good but didn't get quite loud enough. Possibly not enough amplification (only running 75wRMS to them from a JL amp).

New boat has JL 8.8 m6 and i'm quite happy with them. Loud enough to hear very clearly when surfing and they also sound good at all volume levels.

[chpthril]

My last boat had Kicker 8" tower speakers and they sounded good but didn't get quite loud enough. Possibly not enough amplification (only running 75wRMS to them from a JL amp)

Yep, not near enough wattage. We run them in the 200W rms to each, range. In terms of volume potential, they are comparable to the JL 8.8, Wet Sounds Icon-8 and most any 8" out there.

[SONIC]

Yep, not near enough wattage. We run them in the 200W rms to each, range. In terms of volume potential, they are comparable to the JL 8.8, Wet Sounds Icon-8 and most any 8" out there.

I figured, but they did the job and sounded quite good especially for the price. I would run them again.

[BrentB]

My Rev 10s “hiss” quite a bit. It’s fairly distracting at low-intermediate volumes. Is this an issue somewhere in the signal path to the speakers or is the hiss inherent to the HLCD? If I can get rid of this hiss I’d be less dissatisfied with the speakers (the harshness of the HLCD wouldn’t bother me so much).

[chpthril]

A his like that is likely not a product of the speaker. Excessive gain is the usual cause of a simple hiss. A static or buzz is usually a product of a ground loop.

What year is this boat? If its a 2017-2019, has it had the latest amp tunes installed by the dealer? If its a 2017 or 2018, has the dealer checked it against the amp service bulletin?

[BrentB]

Thanks chpthril. I appreciate your expert input.

It’s a 2018 RZX2. I bought it used last year from a Mastercraft dealer 12 hours away. My closest “Tige dealer” is about 3-4 hours away and I think they’re a very low volume dealer (not sure they service many Tige boats at all). It would be a bit of a pain to tow the boat that far for such a minor problem.