6 speakers 1 amp question.....

[Heavy351]

First off this is not for the Marauder.

I am hooking up a new stereo in my parents boat and I am at a loss as to how to make this work.

There are 2 speakers on the bridge, 2 in the cabin and 2 in the bedroom.
Previous to this there were none on the bridge and the stereo Fader controls were used to turn off either set in the cabin(wired to LF and RF) or bedroom (LR and RR).

Now with the extra set I bought one of those radioshack speaker "A, B, C" selectors and hooked it up to just the LF and RF channels and taped off the LR and RR leads.

Well the whole thing sounds like crap and I have to have the volume nearly all the way up to hear anything. If I select more than 1 set of speakers the results are much worse. I expected to hear more volume from the new 20 watt head unit that replaced the 11 watt one.

I am hoping some of you may have a thought here. am I only using half the power by using just the front 2 channels? I don't think you can wire the front and rear channels together (sounds like a bad idea)

If there is a better way to do this without spending a lot more cash?

[rookie1]

You must have 4 speaker outputs coming from the stereo right?

RF and LF outputs from head unit connected to speaker selector input "A"
RR and LR outputs from head unit connected to speaker selector input "B"
should be no other inputs to speaker selector just conect leads going to third pair of speakers to leads coming from from channel "C" of selector.

The lack of output may be due the speaker selector being 8 ohms while most automotive/marine speakers are 4 ohm you want to dbl check that.

[Heavy351]

The switch box I bought has only imput set for a left and right channel (this is obviously for home use and was all that they had)

So I choose the front channels.

Is there such a box that can take imputs from LF,LR,LR,RR and sent just L and R to 3 independent speaker sets? That would be ideal..