[Rhodes22-list] Galley Stereo Speaker Installation

[David Culp]

Someone may have already done this before so I'm just throwing this out
there as a one man's solution:
I had an old pair of stereo speakers left over from my remodel job lying
around the garage.  They have articulating mounting brackets which probably
cost as much as the speakers did and I wanted to put them to some use.  So I
thought... Wouldn't it be nice to have some interior speakers in the boat to
go along with my cockpit speakers.  My Sony CDX CD has 4 channels (front and
rear) so the plan was to use the fader control to adjust the sound level
between the sets or shutoff the cockpit speakers and direct all the sound to
the inside set when you need to be quiet like at a crowded anchorage or slip
at night.
The Rhodes cabin is very ergonomically efficient and try as I might, I just
couldn't figure out a good place to mount speakers in the cabin that was
going to look good, be out of the way and sound good too.  There probably is
a good place for the right type of speakers, but I don't have them.  Anyway,
it dawned on me that the two sliding doors on the galley cabinet meet in the
middle and there is enough space left for speakers to project sound into the
cabin from the sides.

With articulating mounts, I was able to mount on the cabinet walls and then
turn the speakers outward 90 degrees.  You will see in the photos that the
left speaker is mounted a little lower then the right in order to clear the
sink and the right is up and out of the way of the storage area.  You lose a
little storage space but not much and it sounds really good.

To test it, I turned it up to a level a little higher then what you probably
would need at night in the cabin; dropped the pop-top, installed the hatch
cover and then walked around on the adjacent slips just to see what the
noise level was.  You could hear it faintly, but I don't think it would
disturb anyone.  Whether or not the sound is traveling through the water and
you could hear it through the hull of another boat is another question.

It was fairly easy to install.  Just make sure your mounting screws are
large enough to support the weight and short enough not to come through the
other side of the wall into the head.  On the right side, I just used one of
the screws already present holding the cooler in position and then added one
making sure that it didn't penetrate the cooler lining.

Here's a link to the pictures:  http://r22spkrs.hsbtx.net

David