Don't you just hate it when you specifically ask someone not to do something and they go and do it anyway?
So .... the last few weeks have seen a serious cleaning of cupboards and shelves in the kitchen, chucking out ancient bottles and pots, cobwebs, crumbs and general rubbish/dirt. My help who does the cleaning is a friendly lady who can be over-enthusiastic at times and so I said to her; "Be careful with the radio and don't clean behind it." What does she do? Clean behind it, dislodging the speaker wires.
Luckily things weren't powered-up and nothing was damaged but .... the JVC micro system was installed when the kitchen was built, 20 years ago and the speaker cabling isn't straightforward as the speakers are bi-wired.
Running from the back of the JVC mini tower to the speakers several metres away are lengths of 4-way 2mm solid-core electrical installation cable which I put in when we constructed the back wall plating for the kitchen cupboards, installing the loudspeakers then and building around them. Nothing has been shifted in 20 years! Because of this, I had totally forgotten which colour wire went into which socket on the amp - as everything had been pulled out. Time for a re-think which involved rewiring the whole setup.
The mini-system has two separate amps inside: a 16W treble/mid output and a 50W bass section involving a twin set of speaker sockets. With my installation cables having the colours blue, brown, black and yellow/green. I decided to attach short lengths of speaker-cable with blocks of screw-on terminators and clearly mark those cables to avoid confusion.
So, armed with half-metre lengths of a reasonable-quality red/black speaker lead, pre-fitted into termination blocks I attached the kitchen cable, two of the colours already matched the speaker clips: blue and black were in place for the '-' on both high and low speakers, so it was just a case of allocating the other two wires for the '+' connections.
Everything hooked up with new extensions to the mini-set - now for the speakers. First one was so thoroughly built-around that the only option was to pull it out, removing the connections in the process. But fitting extension wires in the same order and replacing it was no trouble. the second speaker was easier and what do I find - I had used the same colouring connections 20 years previously and hadn't actually needed to rewire the speakers at all! But you don't dare to take the risk, do you. Hooked extensions onto the second speaker as well, now the cleaner can mess around to her heart's content.
There is a slight change in the sound, the treble has less edge and the mids are rounder. Actually not a bad thing. This isn't a detail-hungry audiophile system, this is a setup for background toonz during the cooking and washing-up. The little JVC rig can pump out some serious power though and includes a 'Turbo Bass' setting which, with the separate low-end amp, can kick out some hefty volume.
'You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties ...."
