On 3/10/2015 10:02 AM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
"Tom" wrote in message
...
Hi Folks

Thanks gents for the great information. Yes Roger I can do a comparison
but not for a few months, here both Great Lakes near me are frozen over
and that process will not be that easy. Doable but not easy.

I was hoping to read a response like " yes, cut away and your existing
tranducer and new head are compatible so splicing wont matter much at
200khz." I didn't read that statement through all the technical and
obvious and accurate and helpful information. I didn't read that at all.
So for piece of mind I might have to simply install the new tranducer with
extension cable where all plug ends meet female to male properly and
according to manufacture's (and salesmen) recommendations. Which is 100%
guarantee It will work correctly.

Our lakes are no where near the 800 feet depths that these transducers are
good to. If you want better tranducers for a ocean use or sea use then you
can buy the better tranducers, but Lake Erie might be 80 or 90 feet at max
and Lake Ontario might be approx 150 feet. I was in Deep River before,
that was about 700 feet.

I will re-read all this wealth of information again and study it much
closer and both learn and decide. Thank you all for the wealth of
information to make my decision. I am most greatful for that. But I didn't
see a statement like mentioned above so it is obviously something more
technical and critical that it is done right. And any Marina around here
would simply install new.

So if I cannot simply splice and go (about 1 or 2 hours costs) then I will
buy new (about $300.00 plus day's work). But I know that existing
transducer is good quality because it replaced a less quality one a few
years back, but I was hoping there was a way I could identify if it were
200khz to be compatible with the new head. Then I could splice. Or find an
adapter plug to fit, maybe Lowrance sells that.


The way I am seeing it, the old transducer and wiring will not be any good
if it will not work with the new fish finder . I think I would look or make
an adaper for the wiring, but if that is too difficult, I would splice the
wires. If it works, fine, if not, then put in the new transducer.
I don't know how the wiring is attached to the transducer, but is it not
possiable to use the old wiring ?
As for the splicing, I bet you could just use wire nuts and not tell any
electrical differance, but mechanically it would not be a good idea.



Some of these fish finders are quite sensitive to ignition noise from
the engine. It would be best to keep the splice so that the inner
conductor or conductors are shielded. A few high end fish finders have a
balanced feed from the transducer to reduce ignition noise. Of course
there is also the issue of alternator noise but that generally not
radiated throughout the boat. It is inserted through the power
connector. There are good filters to prevent this problem.