help with bad woofer

[#1ncdolfan]

Hi guys my first post, so be gentle I have a pair of sapphire st2 speakers I bought a while ago, I will be replacing soon, however until I do, I just noticed that I have a blown woofer, they don't make these speakers anymore, so does anyone know where I can get replacement?? also the speakers say they're 8ohms, however when I took out the woofer it has a 4ohm sticker on it???no name so I dont know who makes it??? thanks.....

 

[MatthewB.]

I would contact the manufactorer and see if they still offer replacement parts. If not I would contact Madisound.com and see if you can find a reliable substitute driver to put in it's place. In fact i would buy two woofer drivers and replace both so that the timbre would be the same between the two woofers. Because these are the woofers and not the mid range or tweeter having it timbre match is not as important if it were those drivers. But when calling madisound, tell them your situation and they may just have the right replacement part. I'm not positive on this, but I think most woofers have a lower ohm rating than the mid range and tweeter, so that it is easier to drive with the same wattage. But not 100% Good luck.

 

[T2T]

Why not contact TSC (True Speaker Company). The appear to be distributing the same Sapphire models that were previously sold in the Tweeter Stores.

http://www.thespeakercompany.com

 

[Pyrrho]

Before you do any contacting of anyone, make sure the woofer really is blown. Just because a woofer isn't working, that does not necessarily mean the woofer is blown. It could be a bad connection, or possibly a problem in the crossover. If you are "handy", you can remove the woofer and then directly connect it to the speaker wire running from your amplifier/receiver. Then listen to some music, with the volume fairly low. If it does not work then, then you will know the woofer does not work. If it does work, then you can start looking for other problems.

 

[#1ncdolfan]

I did, the troubleshooting Phne # they told me they didn't sell parts for their speakers, nor did they know anything about mine, and their phne # given for orders they told me they did not handle that company anymore?

 

[#1ncdolfan]

And Pyrro, I took out the woofer, took the one from the other speaker out and tried in the first one and that one worked, on the woofer that does not work one of the cables is separated and smells like burnt cable......

 

[TLS Guy]

And Pyrro, I took out the woofer, took the one from the other speaker out and tried in the first one and that one worked, on the woofer that does not work one of the cables is separated and smells like burnt cable......

The voice coil is burnt out.

Your best bet is to have the speaker reconed. Try Orange County Speakers. They will recone most speakers.

Buying a different woofer is never satisfactory, because the Thiel/Small parameters will be different. The sensitivity will be different, the acoustic roll offs will be different.

If you can't get the woofer reconed, I'm afraid it is the end of the road for those speakers.

 

[Pyrrho]

And Pyrro, I took out the woofer, took the one from the other speaker out and tried in the first one and that one worked, on the woofer that does not work one of the cables is separated and smells like burnt cable......

TLS Guy is correct; your voice coil on your speaker appears to be burnt out. Your best options are to:

1. replace the woofer with an identical one (either new or used), if you can get it. The first place to look for a new one is from the manufacturer of the speaker. Some companies carry replacement parts for discontinued models for many years, while others are less good about this. If you are very lucky, you might find a used one on eBay, but this is probably unlikely. Or:
2. get the woofer reconed. I have used http://www.millersound.net/ and have been very happy with the results. There are other places that also do this; I am unfamiliar with the one recommended by TLS Guy. In any case, if you decide to go this route, you will need to contact whoever you choose and find out what they have to say about reconing your specific speaker.

Also, TLS Guy is correct that simply putting in different woofers is not a good idea, as the crossover and cabinet have been designed for the specific speakers that are in it. If you change the speakers, you might be okay, but there is a very high probability that it won't sound right without modifying the crossover and possibly the cabinet, which means you would essentially be designing a new speaker. Most people are not up for such a task, and I recommend that you not try it unless you really know what you are doing.

Another thing to consider, of course, is that you are planning on replacing them soon anyway, so it might not really be worthwhile to fix the ones you have. You might want to research the price you can get for selling your used, if you do fix them, to get an idea of whether this is going to be a bad investment or not.

 

[Tommytutor]

I tried to post the general manager of The Speaker Company's email here but I don't have enough posts yet. You can go to their forum and check feedback to get his email. His name is Nick and I'm sure he can help you out. Their top of the line towers are identical to the Sapphires and I would hope they carry parts to support their own line especially since I recently purchased a pair.

 

[#1ncdolfan]

Thanks TLS guy, Pyrrho and tommytutor, I actually did find one on e-bay and won a bid for it, it should be arriving shortly and hope is in as good condition as the seller said it was..... on a side question on this burnt coil, would this be the cause of my receiver/amp blowing 4 times?? only while playing loudly( very) or not?? I thought it might have been me playing to louldly, but now that I found this fault Im thinking maybe this was the cause???

 

[Pyrrho]

Thanks TLS guy, Pyrrho and tommytutor, I actually did find one on e-bay and won a bid for it, it should be arriving shortly and hope is in as good condition as the seller said it was..... on a side question on this burnt coil, would this be the cause of my receiver/amp blowing 4 times?? only while playing loudly( very) or not?? I thought it might have been me playing to louldly, but now that I found this fault Im thinking maybe this was the cause???

A malfunctioning amplifier can easily burn out a voice coil on a woofer by sending significant amounts of DC to it. The crossover would tend to protect the tweeter (and midrange) from the effects of DC, so this will tend to burn out only the woofer.

 

[#1ncdolfan]

A malfunctioning amplifier can easily burn out a voice coil on a woofer by sending significant amounts of DC to it. The crossover would tend to protect the tweeter (and midrange) from the effects of DC, so this will tend to burn out only the woofer.

Im sorry I think I didn't xplain the question better, would the woofer being blown have caused the amp to blow a channel, I had this happen 4 times, I thought I was playing too loud...

 

[Pyrrho]

Im sorry I think I didn't xplain the question better, would the woofer being blown have caused the amp to blow a channel, I had this happen 4 times, I thought I was playing too loud...

I think it is much more likely that the amp blowing a channel caused the woofer damage.

If I understand you correctly when you said earlier that "on the woofer that does not work one of the cables is separated", then that would mean that the circuit is broken with it and it is the same as hooking up nothing as far as the amplifier is concerned. If you have a meter, hook it up to the blown woofer (on the places where the wires would attach if it were mounted in the speaker cabinet) and measure its resistance. If it measures "infinity", then hooking it to the amplifier would be the same as hooking up nothing, as far as the amplifier is concerned. But don't buy a meter just to test this, because you are probably about to throw away the old woofer anyway.

If you mean by "separated" that the wire is broken and no longer connected to itself, then hooking it up is like hooking up nothing.

Also, if you are repeatedly blowing a channel, you need to stop playing it so loud with those speakers. You either need a more powerful amplifier (or one that can handle lower impedances or both), or you need more efficient speakers (or easier to drive speakers or both). Doing the same thing over and over again is most likely going to keep giving you the same results. So until you get different speakers or a different amplifier, keep the volume down, unless you want to pay for getting the amplifier fixed again and possibly buying some more replacement woofers.

You mentioned earlier that the woofer was marked 4 ohms. How many woofers are in each cabinet? Do you have a link to information about this specific speaker? If there is one woofer, and it is 4 ohms, then it would be odd to rate the total speaker as 8 ohms. Not necessarily wrong, but most likely wrong. Usually, with a single 4 ohm woofer, the total speaker should be rated as 4 ohms (or less if the midrange/tweeter are less). Some manufacturers, however, basically lie when it comes time to tell you what the total, "nominal" impedance of the speaker is, because they know that a lot of amplifiers are rated only for 8 ohms or higher, so they want to rate the speakers as 8 ohms, even when they should be rated less. Of course, not all manufacturers are lying scumbags who will say anything to make a sale, but some of them are.

 

[#1ncdolfan]

Only 1 woofer in each speaker 2 mids and a tweeter....

 

[Pyrrho]

Only 1 woofer in each speaker 2 mids and a tweeter....

Although it is impossible to say definitively without knowing about the crossover design, it seems likely that the manufacturer of your speaker is a lying scumbag. With speakers, the impedance varies according to frequency. The "nominal" impedance is supposed to represent the overall effect or what the speaker may be regarded as being for the amplifier. The thing is, an amplifier typically needs to put out most of its power for reproducing bass, so whatever the impedance is of the speaker at low frequencies is extremely important for an amplifier. Unless there is some impedance compensation in the crossover (which would be unusual for a woofer), there is no way that a speaker with a single, properly rated, 4 ohm woofer should be rated any higher than 4 ohms nominally.

My advice is to keep the volume down until you either replace the speakers or get an amplifier that is more capable of dealing with 4 ohms. For a relatively inexpensive amplifier that can handle 4 ohms, you might want to look at the Behringer A500:

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17004&highlight=behringer

If you have preamp outputs on your receiver, you would hook the right and left preamp outputs on your receiver to the inputs of amplifier, and you would hook up the speakers to the amplifier, and nothing to the right and left speaker terminals on the receiver.

But since you were planning on replacing the speakers anyway, you might want to just keep the volume down until you buy your new speakers.