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When it comes to great audio sound, there is no
part of a home theater that is more overlooked that the speaker cabinet. It is
the very last link in the sound chain and controls the final way you hear
everything. The speaker cabinet reproduces the tone as sound waves in the air
which creates the subtle differences in sound. What happens when you have a
blown speaker in one of your cabinets? Do you fix it or just buy a new one?
Usually the answer to this question is a
wholehearted yes, simply for the reason that those cabinets were built with
your speakers in mind. That is what they designed for. Think about the amount
of math and engineering that was involved in building the cabinets with a
certain amount of air space in mind. |
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These cabinets were tuned specifically for those old
speakers. Installing other speakers in there will not sound the same as your old
speakers. Here is a simple step by step
process how you can remove the bad speaker from the cabinet and repair it.
- Take the speaker cabinet you'll be working on
and set it on its back to remove the speaker grille. Some grilles are
different than others. Some simply pop into place, while others are secured in
with screws visible from the side or front of the cabinet.
- Now that you have the grill removed, you'll
next unscrew the first screw from the bad speaker, and then the screw opposite
the first one. All of the screws need to be removed in an opposite pairs
order.
- Now, carefully list the speaker out of the
cabinet. It will still be connected by wires to the other speakers and the
head unit. Some are attached by two wires while others by four. There should
never come a time when you remove a speaker and there is only one wire. If
this you see this is the case then you may be lucky and the speaker is just
disconnected and not blown out.
- Now take those wires hanging out the back and
pull them out of the speaker tabs using the plastic connectors. Never pull on
the wire itself. You'll end up damaging it. Those tabs should be color coded
to help you distinguish between the positive (red) and the negative (black)
wires. If they aren't, then simply label them with a marker before you remove
them. Be careful not to let the wires fall back inside the cabinet once they
are removed by taping them to the sides.
- Double check that the removed speaker is in
fact blown and dead by determining the resistance between the two positive and
negative connection tabs. If you get a read out on the meter of less than an
ohm or more than twice the impedance rating, you have yourself a bad speaker.
If you get a reading between the two good zones, then there shouldn't be
anything wrong with the speaker. One other way is to lightly press on the
center of the speaker cone. The speaker is blown if it makes a scratchy sound
or does not spring back to its original shape.
- Now that you have your new speaker ready to
go, you'll need to reconnect the wires by pushing the connectors onto the
matching tab. Set the speaker into the mounting hole and replace the screws in
that same opposing pair fashion as used earlier.
- Lastly, you are going to tighten all those
screws, replace the grille and return the speaker cabinet back to its upright
position.
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