Have Marine CD/Radio player with 4 in boat speakers and two over head speakers on ski racks, want to boost power to overhead speakers, what amp would you recommend?

Best bet is to take your boat to a qualified Marine Audio dealer (generally not a boat repair shop or marina), or to a good quality Car audio store that is insured to work on boats (separete insurance usually).
When it comes to boats, you need lots of power and speakers.
First thing to do is make sure what you have is properly installed. Then determine what is "distorting" .. is it too much base, purely volume or what.
Most boats we do (wakeboard style and river boats) we do: 40-75 watts RMS per speaker 4-6 speakers in boat 1 10" or 12" sub with 200-300 watts RMS Tower speaker if requested with 75-125 Watts RMS per speaker

Disconnect all the speaker leads and then hook one speaker (a new, known to work speaker) up directly to the radio using a short (6"-12") piece of speaker wire. Does that speaker work then?

Red = switched power
black = ground (earth)
yellow = bat power (on)

blue white striped antenna turn on

solid blue remote turn on for amp


(speakers)
(all will have one with black/white stripe if all sets have black = ground if all sets white = hot/+

green = rear
( cant remember left/right)
purple = rear

white = left front

Red = Right front

all of this should be on the bottom of the stereo

make sure speakers are connected properly to individual speaker outputs from radio .Also make sure speaker cables going to speakers are not pinched or shorted anywhere

there are 2 hot wires and 1 ground. one the batt. and the other to the fuse box make sure they are both hooked up

Hello jcox7704,

Your head unit is 50 watts X 4 channel maximum power and 21 watts RMS so it's possible that all you need is more power to the speakers. But even 21 watts RMS should be enough for normal speakers. Before investing in an amp, I'd check the speakers and their wiring. Measure the impedance (resistance) at the head unit side to see if they match up.

Hope this helps.

as long as the speakers are wired in parallel it should be ok dont wire them in series as they will overload the amp it is designed to run at 4 ohms

if your radio is puiing more power your ground might not be good enough, use the same spot but remove the ground and rough it up a little on the base with some sand paper or add a metal o ring to get a better ground.

Gary, Sounds like channel 1 burnt out then channel 2 on the internal amp of the radio. If you are looking for another Jensen as a replacement they are decent for a lower priced radio. However if you are not operating your boat on salt water you could use a regular car unit. I replaced the radio in our boat with an generic import and I couldn't be happier. I bought something similar to this model here http://www.mp3playerstore.com/stuff_you_need/dvd/DVD-392.htm not bad for just over 100 bux add 150 for a LCD and watch TV and dvd's in the boat too! although if your lake house is like mine there are only 2 channels to watch :( Hack