Transcript:

Marine stereos are designed to be used on boats, so they run off of 12-volt battery power. But what if you want to use a marine stereo in your hot tub, on your patio or by your pool and you need to be able to plug it into a wall socket?

You will need a 12-volt power supply like this one that can adapt the power from your home to the type of power that your stereo can use.

Not just any 12-volt adapter will do. These little power supplies that you commonly see, (I call them wall warts) are not going to do the job because they don’t provide enough amperage. Most of these are less than 1 amp and that is just not enough.

A typical stereo head unit will need about 5 amps of power. If you want to crank up the volume for parties and plan on using a powerful amplifier, then 5 amps likely won’t be enough either. We do have power supplies available that offer up to 30 amps.

Some people will use computer power supplies and they work great.

This 5-amp power supply that we sell works well, particularly because it has a rubber gasket that seals the case closed so water can’t get in. That makes it good for use outdoors. Even so, you don’t want to leave it lying out in the open but tucked away in an outdoor kitchen cabinet or another protected location will work great.

To connect this one to your stereo you just snip off the end and then splice the wires to the power wires in your wiring harness. Most stereos have 2 power wires (one switched and one constant) and 1 ground wire. Splice both power wires to the positive wire of the power supply and the ground wire to the negative. Make sure you connect both power wires because it won’t work with only one.

Plug in the power supply and you are good to go!