09 VLX By Kicker and Mikes Liquid Audio

[jwanck11]

WOW! That looks so clean it is ridiculous. Nice work Mike!

[ImaPigDog]

Awesome work ChpThril!!!

ET - I'm sure Benj will put it to good use this Summer. Hopefully, I see it in person at WTW.

[thtrog]

Awesome work ChpThril!!!

ET - I'm sure Benj will put it to good use this Summer. Hopefully, I see it in person at WTW.

I can't wait for you to see it in person too.....Wake the World will be here before we know it!!!

[Guapo]

Very, Very nice... I think I'll be able to here it in KY

Great work Mike...very clean install

[thtrog]

Here's a phone pic with a front view....just before dropping her in the water yesterday.

[Timmy!]

Great looking install guys! I bet it sounds killer!

[shawn74]

working on new system for my 09 rz4. leaning towards wet sounds cuz of ztower requiring wet sounds but not married to it. looking for opinions on suggested @reliable brands,wet sounds ,kicker,fosgate,jl audio?

[chpthril]

working on new system for my 09 rz4. leaning towards wet sounds cuz of ztower requiring wet sounds but not married to it. looking for opinions on suggested @reliable brands,wet sounds ,kicker,fosgate,jl audio?

I rep many of the major players as well as a few of the more budget friendly brands. Without sounding like I am talking down about R/F and JL, as i'm not, but they do not have a HLCD (horn loaded compression driver) speaker. What they have id a basic in-boat style coax. These can sound great in and around the back of the boat, but are limited by design in their ability to project clear loud music out to a rider. It will come down to your budget and what your expectations are for a system.

The Kicker KM6500.2 shown above, IMO, will please both the boarders as well as the surfers and party-cove types.

[highrock]

I saw Eddies boat on Sunday. Great job Mike. Everything looked AMAZING and it sounded great too.

[xpjim1]

nice job Mike. Looks killer

[chpthril]

More pics

Thanks for all the kind words

Here a few more pics. Some are of what the boat looked like stock, and a few of the build in progress.

Other then modifying each individual speaker clamp (bar is 2", but elongated during the bending process) in order to get them to fit, the single hardest obstacle was getting the under-helm sub enclosure designed. I literally spent a week mocking it up out of cardboard, piece by piece, until I got the largest box possible that would fit. The ideal volume that we wanted was 2.0 cu/ft, but the best I could get was 1.8 cu/ft. The problem was that the steering cable passed across the under-helm cavity RIGHT in the dead center. This resulted in a complex box.

Factory amp rack and battery config:


In this pic, you can see the JBL "Black-Box" headunit, but now it's gone I relocated it to behind the new amp rack


Laying out the new amp rack. Plywood with a few coats of epoxy, then covered in factory Malibu carpet.



Completed amp rack set into place


Laying out the battery enclosure. Again, it was covered with factory carpet

[BPRES]

Can you post the rest of your install pics? Pleeease!

[chpthril]

Before the sub


The steering cable only allowed me about 9" of depth. The enclosure was built by fitting one board at a time.






I wanted to retain the factory look as well as not eat up too much leg room. I moved the right corner of the foot board out about 2" and the left out about 5", this put the wall almost perpendicular and went from a slight angle toward the bow at the top to near vertical. After looking at the setup as pictured below, I decided I wanted the sub mounted directly to the box, then have the wall fit over the grill giving them a recessed look.




Walk-thru before the Kicker KM6250.2's


Under-seat storage before the shoe-horned Kicker SKM-10


Stock speaker. The "wakesetter" logo had a small 3 LED asm that barely lit up the "W" so we swapped it out for a strip of LED's.

[thtrog]

WOW....I'm seeing most of this for the first time tonight. Great pictures of the install Mike. I really like seeing the before afters for comparison. We cruised in just before dark tonight and the lighting is great and not too much. I actually turned it on with some music while cleaning up the boat at house....I really didn't want to cover her up.

[thtrog]

A couple of shots on the water.....