The old speakers were blown out (two in cockpit, two in cabin) and the old stereo had no auxiliary input for the ipod/computer. After tolerating a noisy tape-adaptor system for four months we elected to spring for new stuff. We bought a bottom dollar “marine” stereo (only marine thing about it was a piece of plastic across the top of it, sealing off a couple screw holes), two 6.5″ speakers for the cockpit, and two mounted box-like speakers for the cabin. We ran fresh Ancor tinned marine-grade speaker wire for all of them. I did it by the book in splicing, soldering, and heat shrinking the dozen wires out the back of the stereo, and mounted a little beautiful 1/8″ headphone jack in the bulkhead for the ipod hookup.
Mounting the speakers in the cockpit proved far more of a job than I anticipated. I had hoped that the new speakers would just screw into the old mounting holes, but of course that wasn’t the case. So we had to cut out a new ring of plywood. While we were at it we went ahead and replaced the sealing beckson port that houses the speaker.
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