Quote:
Originally Posted by JimmyDarci
Seeking advice replacing all electronics on 46 foot cat. Tons of research done online and at West Marine and the other big box store in the region. Employees offered limited help and no leads on install. Funny, I feel like I am about to drop $10-20k and not finding an eager salesperson to close the deal or even refer me. Any tips on where or how to buy an entire system, what brand would you recommend and any tips for either saving on a bulk purchase of electronics or pro-installers in New England that you could recommend?
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I can tell you I started by asking for recommendations for
local electronics retailers/installers -- not big box stores, not WM, not Defender, etc.
Once my market
survey (?) bubbled three names up to the top, and described to each of those what I wanted to do, and asked for their recommendations... sort of a "request for proposal" process. I talked with each, including discussion of pros/cons of various brands/models... eventually settled on one, and made some of my own mental modifications along the way too. The folks I settled on also had several working examples of various systems in their "show room" and I could get at least a little hands-on comparison too.
Individual component prices ended up not that much different from WM or other retail prices.
And then my outcome included their professional
installation, too.
I could also have been "helper" on some of the
installation, and that would have saved a bit of labor costs and given me more insight into the install... but I was still working at the time, couldn't take the time off, etc.
Anyway, that was 11 years ago -- relatively broad system including some intentional redundancies -- and our outcome from all that has been very good.
FWIW, we ended up with
Furuno, and everything we have is still supported. That was heavily influenced by having an original
Furuno radar and
GPS Navigator (like a plotter, but without the chart display) onboard when we bought the boat... and also influenced by being able to run the same "software" (engine) --
MaxSea TimeZero -- on the ship's
laptop.
-Chris