I had the same issue as George, I have a 21 year old boat that had four crappy looking speakers. So I put four 8" Kickers in and a Kenwood marine deck and amp. It looks better than what was there and sounds great to me. So how much do I use it? hardly at all. When i'm on the water and not running I like the quiet and the sound of the water. Occasionally if I have a friend with me we turn it on for a few minutes, laugh about it and shut it off. Mostly I use it when the boat is on the trailer and I'm working on the boat and that's at pretty low levels. Maybe I'm just to old to really want to crank it up all the time. But my 6 year old loves to crank it up. He loves hard rock and thinks the Kickers sound great.