Stereo system in a boat

[Btyson2003]

I have a small ski boat with a Sony in dash deck (non-marine grade) and 4.5 inch Polk Audio speakers. Recently the stereo started acting up. I seem to get very little volume and what I do get seems to be just highs. I took the speakers out and hooked them to my home stereo and they seemed to work great. Would this mean that the deck is bad? Or could it be in the wiring? The SOny deck is only four years old.

If I need to replace anything, how important is it to buy marine equipment? The deck does have a shield over it and the speakers are dual cone and not paper type. Any help would be appreciated.

Bill

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[CrossoverOre 10+ year member]

I suppose not entirely too important to buy marine if the non marine deck you have lasted 4 years. By the time they burn up there have been a ton of improvements on stereo's, mostly features but also function. if you hooked up the speakers to another source and they sound great then look towards the condition of the wire running the speakers. make sure they are not corroding on you. Also pull the deck out and see how much corrosion is happening there. I have seen issues where there has been pretty extensive corrosion on the board that the stereo plug is connected to cause a similar problem. is there any amplifier running the speakers or just straight off the deck? I would probably lean toward the deck being the problem if there is no amp, and after you double check wire condition and voltage levels and the back of the stereo and speaker wires out to the speakers.