Hella Marine Dual-Tone Trumpet Horn Kit | 113 dB 12V

Every boat needs a way to make noise, and the Hella Marine dual-tone horn kit is a straightforward way to get it done. You get two compact trumpet horns in one box, a 500 Hertz high tone and a 400 Hertz low tone. Wire them together and they put out a combined 113 decibels, which is plenty to be heard over your own engine, wind, and the boat next to you at the fuel dock.

The dual-tone setup is what makes this kit worth having over a single horn. One trumpet on its own sounds thin. Pair a high tone with a low tone and you get that full, layered blast that actually carries across the water. It's the same reason big rigs and trains run two-tone horns. Two frequencies stacked together read as urgent, and they cut through background noise a lot better than one note alone. At 113 decibels, this pair is loud.

So who's this for? Just about any powerboat or sailboat that needs a dependable electric horn at the helm. If your boat is 12 meters or longer, you're required to carry a sound-signaling device, and a wired dual-tone horn is the cleanest way to check that box. Even on smaller boats where a handheld air horn is technically legal, having a real horn on a helm switch means you're never fumbling for a can when a jet ski cuts across your bow. The 3.4 inch trumpets are compact enough to tuck under a center console or behind a hardtop without eating up space. It also earns its keep in fog. A series of blasts is how you signal your position when visibility drops, and you'll be glad it's wired to a switch and not buried in a locker.

What's in the box is simple. Two horns, the high tone and the low tone, plus the galvanized mounting bracket. That's it. You supply the wire, the relay, the fuse, and a momentary switch at the helm. Most boaters already have those in the parts drawer, and if you don't, they're cheap and easy to find.

A quick word on wiring, because this is where people get into trouble. The pair draws 72 watts on 12 volts, so that's around 6 amps. That's more than you want to run through a small dash switch on a long cable run. Do it right and wire the horns through a relay, with the momentary helm switch triggering the relay coil and a properly fused feed running to the horns themselves. A 10 amp fuse on that circuit is sensible. Skip the relay and push everything through the switch, and you can cook the switch or the wiring on a 20 foot run. It's a 20 minute job to add the relay, and it saves you a real headache down the road.

Mounting is easy with the included galvanized metal bracket. Put the horns somewhere they'll stay reasonably dry and where the trumpets point down or to the side so water can't pool inside. If you mount them facing up, drill a small drain hole at the lowest point so rain and spray drain out instead of sitting in the trumpet. We like to mount them 12 to 18 inches above the deck to keep them clear of the worst of the bow spray. Salt is hard on everything out here, so give the bracket and hardware a rinse when you rinse the boat, put a thread locker on the mounting bolts, and check them every few months. Vibration is the enemy of any bracket-mounted gear.

The housing is black ABS plastic, so it won't corrode, and the whole kit is built to the Hella Marine fit-and-forget standard. It's not a fancy piece of gear. It's a simple, loud, dependable horn that does exactly one job and does it well. Wire it right, mount it smart, and you'll forget it's there until the day you actually need it.