Need a answer re positive and negative - please

[Daniel Quinn]

I have been lacquering my speakers and i made a cock up re wiring and need some help , probably from the Doc - please

you may know that my speaker cable is hard wired direct to loudspeaker with no crossover on the four bass drivers [ see picture elsewhere ]

now I can no longer identify the positive and negative speaker wires - the ones which come direct from the cone/voice coil and usually attach to a terminal with a + - spade connector on . Now does it matter which is plus or minus in these as long as i use the same for all - say designate the right lead as positive . if not how do you tell which is which

thanks in advance .

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Just use the same for all it really makes no difference. It would be same as swopping pos and neg on the speaker terminals and you have a 50-50 chance of being the same as before. Some people claim that changing absolute phase on a speaker changes things, it is complete cobblers, it is AC so it matters not if the edge of the note is a suck or a blow, and anyway in the recording process absolute phase has probably changed lots of times.

[Daniel Quinn]

Ta ,doc , I have a feeling , prior to this there were a mis mash , so i designate the right as positive on all four drivers and wire in series as before and there may be an improvement . :D

[Lindsayt]

One thing to watch out for is if your bass units become out of phase with your midrange units - if they are intended to be in phase - or vica versa.

With some speakers it's debatable as to whether the speakers sound better with the bass drivers in phase with the midrange units or not. One way may sound more impressive, whilst the other may sound more satisfying with long term listening.

[Daniel Quinn]

Thanks lyndsay , i was able to identify the original positive and negative on the mid range and tweeter . As they have separate pair of series wired speaker cables attached , I can thus swap them over at the amplifier end and see what happens, if necessary .

I did this job at weekend and because I was working from home yesterday due to flooded railway line , i thought i would listen to records :D and it didnt sound right , as if there was a seperate volume control on the midrange tweeter and it was higher and a lack of dynamic range and ummph. the phase test on my test record was useless , so taking them apart was the only option

hopefully , yours and doc's advise will do the trick , but didnt finish till 11 oclock last nite and so not listened
yet .