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Author Topic: What would this do?  (Read 4619 times)

Kurt Rivers

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What would this do?
« on: April 23, 2004, 07:48:30 PM »

If somebody takes a speaker cap apart.
disconnects the negtive wire from the connector
replace it with the postive that should goto the output

So when pluged in the postive will be routed back to the negtive
Would this harm anything?
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Dietrich Sider

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2004, 12:17:43 AM »

Hey Kurt,

If I understand what you're asking, you want to know what happens if someone reverses the connections inside a speaker - i.e. connecting the negative lead to the positive terminal, and the positive lead to the negative terminal.

If that's the case, you have reversed the polarity of the speaker. (Not to be confused with phase  Twisted Evil) The practical result will be that the speaker will be moving in the opposite direction that it used to when a signal is applied. This isn't a problem if you only have one speaker, but with multiple speakers you run into a problem - one speaker is now moving out, while the others are moving in, and vice-versa. The result is a canceling effect and sound output is significantly reduced.

There's a great article on polarity and phase in the study hall if you're interested.
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Dietrich Sider

Kurt Rivers

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2004, 05:13:13 PM »

thanks..but It's a lil diffrent then that. I drew it out to give you a better idea.
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Kurt Rivers

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2004, 05:13:39 PM »

This is what I am talking about here.
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Dietrich Sider

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2004, 05:27:38 PM »

OH!  Shocked

If you hooked up an amplifier to that input terminal in the regular fashion,  you would now have a dead short across the output of the amplifier and something in the amp would go 'pop'. . .  

Did someone do this and you're trying to troubleshoot? Or do you have an idea of something you would want to accomplish by doing this?
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Dietrich Sider

Kurt Rivers

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2004, 05:39:36 PM »

I took my box apart and was just wondering if it was harmful to anything. Are you saying the normal way i have up wont wonrk right? I'm pretty sure thats how it looked.
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Dietrich Sider

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2004, 05:48:24 PM »

The one you labelled 'normal' is correct. the one you labelled 'my-way' would short the ouput of an amplifier.
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Dietrich Sider

Andy Peters

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2004, 06:09:03 PM »

Kurt wrote on Sat, 24 April 2004 14:39

I took my box apart and was just wondering if it was harmful to anything. Are you saying the normal way i have up wont wonrk right? I'm pretty sure thats how it looked.


As Dietrich says, you've shorted the amplifier output to ground.

In many cases, this can be catastrophic to a power amplifier.

Amps with good protection circuits should shut themselves down almost immediately.  Amps without such protection may self-immolate with a smell you'll not soon forget.

Why did you wire your cabinet as you did?

--a
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"This isn't some upside down inverted Socratic method where you throw out your best guess answers and I correct your work." -- JR


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Kurt Rivers

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2004, 07:06:18 PM »

I did not wire it like that. I was just wondering what would happen.  Smile

*thanks by the way  Cool *
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Phil Ouellette

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Re: What would this do?
« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2004, 03:18:58 PM »

This thread is exactly why the lounge was created.

Imagine if Kurt had been too intimidated to ask this on the classic lab and had gone ahead and tried this.  When you have no background in electronics, stuff like this can look sorta all right.

Best of all nobody will wail on Kurt for clogging up the LAB with "dumb" questions.

Kurt, one thing to keep in mind.  You can think of the amp as a battery and the speaker as a motor (this is actually sort of an accurate description, it just leaves out a lot).  If you wired the plus and minus terminals of a battery to a motor like you showed in the second drawing what would happen?  The battery would get really hot (probably burn up) and the motor wouldn't move.  Same thing would happen with an amp.

Phil
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That's "newbiesque" to my friends.
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