Options on replacing a vintage Clarion XDMx headunit and remote in 2025?

[SilentSeven]

I'm considering moving out of the stone age and replacing my OG Clarion XDM3 headunit and associated wired dash remote. My system works generally OK but my objective in replacing is to get cleaner sound in the boat. I'm not looking at creating a thumping lake terrorizing setup - just one that is cleaner than what I have today.

I'm opening a new thread as many of the products referenced in prior threads are NLA. For example, the Clarion 608 with the MW1 looked to be a good option but the MW1 is now NLA and there appears to be no replacement product. Tagging MLA has he's always been super helpful on all audio threads.

I'd love input on how others have solved this, any pictures you have and feedback on what I think my options are.

Here's my current setup just as a starting point:
- Glovebox mounted XDM3 headunit
- Dash mounted Clarion M301RC remote (the oval one)
- JL Audio bluetooth dongle via the Aux port
- RCA outputs drive a Kenwood KAC-M3004 class D amp (50 watts x 4 channel)
- 4 Infinity 6.5" marine speakers in stock location

I plan to keep the existing Kenwood amp and speakers. Looking to upgrade the headunit and remote. I expect that any upgrade will require me to upgrade the dash bezel to the newer "round style" - https://nautiqueparts.com/remote-con...round-remotes/. Sources I require are bluetooth and AM/FM. I would strongly prefer a solution where there is a basic display visible on the dash.

Here appear to be my options - would love comments and any advise

Option 1 - Mount a new headunit in the glovebox and replace the dash remote.

There seems to be a very limited set of products today that will work. Seems like most all remotes have moved to rectangular configuration and many new head units are not DIN based so they won't mount in the glovebox. This approach is simpler as it works well with existing wiring.

Fusion RA70 head with MS-ARX-70 remote. The RA70 head will fit into the glovebox with a faceplate and DIN cage. I can't tell if the remote will fit into the bezel as it's designed to be a surface mount remote. I don't like that the remote has no display and also won't turn on the unit. You'd have to open the glove box to turn on the tunes.

Better would be the Clarion M608 head with the MW1 remote. The 608 has the oversize face that will fit into the glovebox. The MW1 remote has a display and looks like it should mount in the bezel. The new style 8 pin remote cable would have to be run to the dash. Blocking this is there are no MW1 remotes for sale (anyone have an MW1 they'd like to sell me?).

Option 2 - Use a round headunit in the dash where the remote is. Don't put a headunit in the glove box.

This may be the best 'usability option' as it has a display but it adds decent installation complexity as existing power and amp leads must be extended under the floor to the dash. I'm not excited about adding more dash wiring lord knows there is enough as is crammed into the footwell and dash locations. Really helpful would be any input on what size unit (mounting hole and bezel diameters, unit depth) will fit into the dash along with candidate units.

Examples of this approach look like a WetSound WS-MC-RND unit. Unit specs cutout of 3.0" (diameter) x 5.0" (depth) and a bezel of 3.6875" (diameter) x 0.875" (depth).

My current ranking of solutions top to bottom but in the end I think any are viable:

-Clarion 608 or it's smaller 508 brother with an MW1 remote: Assumes the MW1 remote would fit in the dash and I can find one. There is also an option for a MW2 clarion remote (also NLA) but it lacks a display. This retains existing wiring and is very close to the existing configuration. Most expensive solution.

- Fusion RA70 with matching Fusion bluetooth remote: Simple to install as it uses existing wiring and bluetooth for the remote. I believe I'd have to fab up some backing plate mount for the remote to solve the surface mount design. Does not have a remote display. Fusion does have a phone app that could be a benefit as well. Decently price effective.

- Dashmount round headunit: Most complex to install due to the required wiring and having to accommodate the depth of the head. Unclear what will exactly fit. Does solve the display problems. Most price effective.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

[MN Ryan]

I'll be following as I can envision myself doing this in the next year or two (but I already have a round wired remote).

[bturner]

I struggled with this as well and have gone through the "bench installation process" a bunch with my boat back in the Covid days when we were using the boat a lot. I'm not familiar with your dash so I don't know the space limitations but its probably pretty safe to assume that your dash like mine is full of irregular shaped openings in hard to modify gracefully, vacuum formed plastic that were made for a very specific gauge package layout. The days of flat, rectangular panels are long gone.

With mine, I was leaning towards the JL remote in the dash and sticking to the Clarion hidden amp concept which is currently installed but just upgraded to the JL system. My beef with the Clarion is the single line liquid quartz display which is near useless unless you're looking directly at it while the boat is stationary. The problem here, like yours is will it fit (most likely not without some scary modification) and then there's cost. The remote alone is $300, the hidden source unit is another $350. All in with tax and shipping you're talking $700 for what would be a functional replacement. That's a lot of cash for the visual improvement, which is why that got put on hold. At that price I'm leaning more toward fixing the neutral lock out which is a whole other thread/project.

Like you I could delete the source unit from the equation as there is little value of having it in this small boat and do the Media Master 55 directly in the dash for much more palatable $400 but like you (again) the thought of wrangling the wiring around the bow or under the floor strikes dread in me while I have a working rig.

In the end with my situation and at this point in bench installations, I'm leaning towards the dash installation. The KISS theorem (Keep It Simple Stupid) keeps blaring in my mind with the 2 stage installation. Twice as much hardware and wiring to break and little to no functional gain. The part that keeps me from going this direction is the last picture below which illustrates the wiring mess you would be dealing with. Figuring out what to do with that mess behind the dash would be challenging and unless I did it properly it would drive me nuts even though it wouldn't be visible.

So, to sum everything up, I feel your pain and unfortunately have done absolutely nothing to help you other than to rehash the same concerns you have. At the end of the day If I were to take on this project, even though I don't see the value (which is why I've done nothing), I would probably spend the money and do the remote source box so I could sleep at night. Which in your situation would be to buy another head unit and hopefully find a remote you can live with and will somehow fit.

[SilentSeven]

Thanks bturner for confirming that I'm not slowly going insane. The very fact that I had to actually write the above post above made me wonder.

And you're poet of elegance. I nearly choked on my morning coffee as I read your perfect summary of the fitment problems. I applaud your brilliance! I'll find a pic of my dash...I'm sure I have one in the archive. Just have to look.

...so I don't know the space limitations but its probably pretty safe to assume that your dash like mine is full of irregular shaped openings in hard to modify gracefully, vacuum formed plastic that were made for a very specific gauge package layout.

Regarding the solution cost...at this point I've dug a mental hole, dumped the concern at the bottom, and back filled it with 'shut up don't go there yet' language. I'll only visit that question once a viable solution is found. Cost is not the primary driver as I expect do this upgrade exactly once before I leave gods green earth.

For now I continue to watch this thread with hopes that someone smarter than I will post a graceful solution.

[bturner]

I've looked at this upgrade about 3 times every winter but can never get myself to pull the trigger. I love the way that JL Audio unit looks and can picture it in my boat but $700.

The post Scooter G did on the throttle base unit keeps rolling around in my head and it would be more functional, dang it. You guys need to live closer so we can knock out some of these projects. I'll buy the beer.....

[SilentSeven]

Here's a snip from a shot I had that shows the dash. The problematic remote is circled.

[bturner]

I think going to the round remote panel and remote is about your best/only option. I was out surfing my boat this morning and looking at mine again. Yeah, it work's fine so I'll leave that alone and watch your progress..

Did some more scouting on the throttle base while there and if the replacement depth sounder transducer fixes that problem I think I've talked myself into replacing the throttle base and keeping the boat. I moved the boat to a friend's house on a private lake that has a 3 mile surf run that averages 60' deep. Last year I put less than 10 hours on the boat. I got the boat moved over 2 weeks ago and have 7 hours on the boat now. I'll keep it listed until I go on vacation in 2 weeks. If no sale I'll keep it and remove the listings. You guys may be stuck with me for a few more seasons.

[distinguishedmotorsports]

M608, while you still can. Remote panel is available for MW1 (round). Some of you will would have to buy remote cable adapters to go from 7 to 10 pin IIRC. both m608 and mw1 are NLA.

[SilentSeven]

distinguishedmotorsports - thanks for this. That is the most likely setup I considered as well. Two questions:

1 / does the MW1 cleanly fit into the revised round Nautique dash panel? I wasn't able to get a good idea on how well it would fit.

2 / do you believe this would provide a material upgrade in the sound?

[SilentSeven]

So...was able to pickup a MW1 unit. M608 is next. M608 is still available for sale new.

Should be interesting.

[zigs]

I did the M608 in my 04 Ski Nautique 3 or 4 winters ago. Was pretty much plug and play. My remote still worked, just wanted Bluetooth and needed to upgrade the speakers as most were not working, and decided to upgrade the head unit at the same time. I used an adapter to connect to the remote, and kept the 04 factory remote. Display doesn't work but volume works, and skipping tracks works.

[SilentSeven]

What adapter did you use?

Did you feel you got any sound improvement? Guess that might be hard to know if you also did speakers at the same time...?

Also, the original Clarion head units have a rather sophisticated tone adjustment system compared to the 608 - any feedback on that change?

Guess that might be hard to know if you also did speakers at the same time...

[zigs]

I would have to look up the adapter to go to the older factory remote. I might have made a post after the install was complete that listed everything, I did.
Yeah my factory speakers had seen better days. I just did mid grade kickers and ran them off a 4 channel amp so the sound was much better than before. Not sure if the 608 was a downgrade for sound, sound is good to me but I am not a audio expert by any means, honestly just did it at the same time as the speakers cause I wanted a blue tooth head unit.

[SilentSeven]

Short update - moving forward the stereo upgrade project. I now have in hand all of the following:

- Clarion M608 head unit / 'scratch and dent' unit purchased from Crutchfield
- Clarion MW1 remote / 'new old stock' unit purchased via Ebay
- The revised round dash plate that replaces the football shaped one in the early boats like mine / ordered from Nautique parts.

Last part to order is the new 8 pin remote cable and if you've been following on the other thread ( https://www.planetnautique.com/vb5/f...o-remote-cable ) looks like the 25 ft version in the right size. They are available on Ebay for about $30 or so.

For now, I plan to keep the existing

- Kenwood 50 watt 4 channel amp
- Four Infinity marine co-axle speakers

Plan is to baseline how it sounds post installation and decide what do from there. Financially, the project is pretty much a folly. I don't expect the improvement to be inline with the expense but...hey...lots of stuff with boats are like this so I'm not gonna look back too much.

I may yet get the system installed this fall. Need a good weather window and a little extra time. I'll post some pictures when I get to that stage.

[bturner]

Honestly, I don't think any stereo upgrade is going to be a price performer anymore. The price of audio gear (just like everything else) has just gotten nuts. I used to buy JL and thought it was really expensive at the time. Now, the used gear I see being listed is more than I paid for it a few years ago when it was new. I honestly don't know who's buying a lot of the overpriced gear I see being advertised these days. I'd like to say it's because I'm old and doing the "go old days" routine but I'm talking about pricing differences from 3 or 4 years ago.

I was perfectly fine with a JL 400/4 type of amp for $400 which has now been replace by an $1100 option based on the new design or a $680 version of the old amp which is now supposed to be a marine/automotive version. I suspect the latter to be the old automotive version being sold as both now. Can you find cheaper alternatives? Sure, but that's not the same is it? To the feature point, do you really need advance sound processing on a boat? IDK, maybe, I guess some will but like the cars/trucks, I don't need about 30% of the garbage they load them up with and I'm forced to pay for. I kind of relate the situation to that of the auto industry where you have cars/trucks being built loaded with options nobody wants.

Now I don't want to go on some tangent rant here but how many people want to pay for these new car "features".....

• Start/stop system that turns off the vehicle whenever you stop - The BIL got a $200 credit for this during the pandemic when they didn't have the chips to install it. I would have paid $200 for them not to include it.
• Seatbelt interlock - This was a new one on me. BIL's new Tahoe won't let you put the truck in gear without the seatbelt fastened. Thanks for the safety feature mommy.
• Variable displacement engine - This gem has been destroying engines since inception going back to the Cadillacs in the early 2000s.
• Built in Spyware logging system - This was originally sold to us as a system that would log errors for diagnostics that is until they found out they could sell a version of this data to insurance companies.
• Infotainment system no one asked for - Started out great with offerings from Bang, JBL and other top tier companies. Turned into obsolete junk that no one really needs anymore as they load up any advanced features you might actually want as subscriptions. Honestly, my phone has all the advanced features I need. Keep your bug laden system and just give me an interface with a good supporting audio system.
• Proprietary Interface - To go with the above, the direction being force on us by GM is to move away from Android Auto and Car Play. It's all about the value of your data and how they can monetize it once they lock you into their system. I'll bet the privacy statement has something in there about them owning all data that goes into their system. When the implement this, it will mark the last GM vehicle I buy.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/...-them-for-data

• Oversized screens - Talk about something we're seeing here that will make a 10 year old car worthless. Take a look at all the screens they're putting in the cars now. You've seen how this works out with boats, cars are next. The new Mustang is a classic example of this tech being shoved down our throats that nobody wants. Between a dash design that strayed too far away from what people wanted/expected to engine management systems that have locked out enthusiasts that want the ability to work on their own cars, just more examples of tech nobody wants. This latest generation Mustang isn't selling well to the people they were supposedly designing it for.

And these are just a few of them that come to mind quickly, I'm sure others have their favorites as well. Boats are the same if not worse. Want to know why new boats are so expensive? Just look at all the tech being shoved into new boats. And if you think this doesn't effect base models, believe me, even if you don't want a quarter of the "features" being offered on the new Paragon you're paying a share of the development of those features even on your 200 Skier.

Well, I feel better now. SilentSeven I apologize for the absolute thread jack and hope the project goes well. Apparently I have way too much time on my hands this morning and my recent experience with new car shopping isn't turning out to be fun anymore. Please post pictures of your project.

Everyone have just a peachy day!