This article was written by Connor, one of our founding editors. Connor is a full-time travel and lifestyle photographer with extensive experience in the outdoors industry.
There’s nothing quite like blaring out your favorite music while you’re spending a day on the water. In order to do so, though, you need the best set up you can get in terms of wake tower speakers. Not only this, it means knowing how to install the speakers to maximize sound quality and volume.
As you could guess, the acoustics on a boat isn’t incredible and sound can get easily lost. In part, this is due to a thing called ‘dispersion’. Not sure what that is? Here’s a great guide we found which explains it simply.
Your aim? We could guess that it would be to have a set up in which both you and any wakeboarder behind your boat can hear the speakers clearly. After all, you may well have just forked out hundreds of $ for excellent quality boat speakers.
If you’ve invested your hard-earned cash in good speakers, it is well worth investing time to set them up correctly on your boat.
Before we get into how to position and set the speakers up for the best sound, we’re going to tackle the topic of mounting and wiring. For those not used to the process, it can be annoyingly fiddly. We’ve produced this straightforward guide to save you the headaches others go through.
One of the simplest and most common ways to attach speakers to a wakeboard tower is to use clamps. Of course, make sure your clamps are resistant to rust since they’ll be constantly exposed to harsh conditions. That said, most speakers will come with their own mounts which will have been designed to suit a marine environment.
It’s pretty easy to get this part of the installation process right and doesn’t require much instruction. Clamps can usually be adjusted vertically so that you can get the perfect height for your speakers. Additionally, they’ll normally allow you to swivel your speakers, which means that you can control the directional volume as best you can.
Make sure that you mount them somewhere along the tower which isn’t going to get in the way as you make your way around that boat. With that in mind, you should also consider placing them wide enough apart that you’ll benefit from a beautiful stereo sound.
This is the part of the wake tower speaker installation that baffles most who haven’t done it before. It is also probably the most ‘DIY’ aspect of the whole process, too.
The type of wakeboard tower you have will determine how easy this process is for you. Many towers don’t come pre-wired and you’ll have to do a lot of the work yourself. This may require drilling a hole through the tower at the top (for the speaker) and bottom (for the power source) to feed the wire through. If the wire is ever coming out of the tower, make sure to cover it in either plastic or rubber tubing.
Feeding the wire through the tower can be a real pain for people. Try to let gravity do the work for you and feed the wire down the tower. You may need to use a small hook or fish tape. Additionally, a good old fashioned wire coat hanger can do the trick.
The truth is, there’s no winner method to feeding the wire. It’ll take a bit of experimenting and everyone has their own method. It can also depend on the curves and bends in your tower.
Sometimes, wakeboard towers will already have small holes intended for wiring, which you’ll usually find at the crossbars. If it’s not big enough, you should drill to widen it and then feed the wire through with a small hook.
Alternatively, if you ever take the tower down from time to time, it is probably worth investing in a wiring harness. This will allow you to easily connect and disconnect from power. If your tower is already wired for sound, then happy days! All you’ll need to do is connect the wire to your speakers and amplifier.