How are dipoles usually wired internally?

[demoncamber]

I have the Phase Technology DS-T's and I'm currently trying to figure out the phase of the front/rear tweeters.

I tried measuring with a multimeter, as each tweeter's wire are color coded, black as ground and green as positive. However, upon using the multimeter I found that only the mid range reads correctly from the input terminal to the corresponding positive and negative wires for the midrange driver.

When i go to measure the tweeter wires to try and find the - and +, I found they are all (4) reading as grounds. How is this possible?

The wiring goes from the input terminals to the back of the cabinet, to the crossover then off to the corresponding drivers.

And now I'm lost.

I basically want to have both tweeters in phase, the rear and the front, because these are my side surrounds and I'm using dipoles as my rear surrounds as well.

 

[lsiberian]

I have the Phase Technology DS-T's and I'm currently trying to figure out the phase of the front/rear tweeters.

I tried measuring with a multimeter, as each tweeter's wire are color coded, black as ground and green as positive. However, upon using the multimeter I found that only the mid range reads correctly from the input terminal to the corresponding positive and negative wires for the midrange driver.

When i go to measure the tweeter wires to try and find the - and +, I found they are all (4) reading as grounds. How is this possible?

The wiring goes from the input terminals to the back of the cabinet, to the crossover then off to the corresponding drivers.

And now I'm lost.

I basically want to have both tweeters in phase, the rear and the front, because these are my side surrounds and I'm using dipoles as my rear surrounds as well.

Can't you tell by the crossover and wires? I would expect them to be wired in phase.

 

[demoncamber]

I'm not very well versed with crossovers.

But how is it possible that each tweeter wire was reading on the negative only terminal and nothing on the positive? Do I need to disconnect the other drivers and do only 1 driver at a time?

 

[lsiberian]

I'm not very well versed with crossovers.

But how is it possible that each tweeter wire was reading on the negative only terminal and nothing on the positive? Do I need to disconnect the other drivers and do only 1 driver at a time?

Without seeing you do it it's hard to understand what you are actually doing.

Crossovers are circuits the reduce certain frequencies from being seen by a speaker driver. They are used to prevent the tweeter from bottoming out and the woofer from hitting breakup modes.

 

[demoncamber]

Right, I understand the basics of crossovers, I'll have to take a pic of it. I emailed the engineer as well and I will try to find out the wiring schematic of it all.

It breaks out to a circuit board and on the left side is a cluster of two black wires and one green, the middle circuit is just a blue + going to the midrange, and the left side is another two black wires and one green.

Now the confusing part for me is, one green, one black go to each tweeter and the blue and black go to the midrange. When I tested them with a multi, both wires going to each tweeter, were coming up as negative and the only positive I could find was the single blue wire going to the midrange.

I then checked all the different solder points on the circuit board with one multi probe in the negative input terminal as I touched each point to the solder points, and all wires with exception to the single blue wire came back as negatives.

I figured next time I will disconnect all drivers and only test one connected at a time from the input terminal to the wires going to the driver.

 

[Swerd]

If I understand what you're saying, your speakers have front & rear tweeters that are normally wired in opposite phase with each other. And you want to switch the polarity of the rear tweeter to be in phase with the front tweeter. Is this correct?

It would help if you give us a link to your model speaker. Are these 2-way speakers, or what?

First of all, don't change any of the wiring for your front drivers, and put away your multimeter. I doubt if it will help. Crossovers also can change the phase of the speakers depending what order (as in 1st order, 2nd order, etc.) the crossover slopes are. So leave your front drivers wired as they came. You run the risk of creating a giant dip in the speaker's response around the crossover frequency if you get things wrong.

If your rear tweeter was originally wired to be out of phase with the front tweeter, simply switch the two wires that go to to the rear tweeter. If I understand you correctly, there should be nothing else to it.

 

[demoncamber]

Swerd, that is correct.

Here is the dilemma I am facing, The dipoles in question are the Phase Technology DS-T's. They are 2-way hybrid dipoles from the 1996 era, they have the two tweeters on the side at an angle, and the midrange in the center.

Now these dipoles were before the more advanced formats and do not have the designated right and left placements.

So I opened them up a couple days ago and found the tweeters wired with colored wire and a red mark on one of each tweeter wire posts. It was very easy to tell they both appeared to be wired in phase. But when I went to go take a look at the crossover, it appeared to me that both black and green wires going to the tweeters were all soldered and clustered together, with one of the negative black wires going to the midrange, that kind of puzzled me a bit, because that would mean there's two negative wires going to both the tweeters. The only driver that appears to be connected correctly is the blue and black wires going to the midrange.

So I broke out my multimeter, and stuck one probe into the positive input terminal on the back of the speaker and began touching all the colored speaker wires internally going to each driver, and i found the only one that peaks the multi is the blue + wire going to the midrange, all the rest of the black/green wires going to the tweeters only peaked the multi when being probed at the negative rear input.

Now is this possible? Or am I just confusing myself?

 

[Swerd]

Or am I just confusing myself?

Yes. You must have a circuit and wiring diagram to know what is going on, and you will learn nothing with a simple multimeter. Speakers get AC signal with varying frequency. DC multimeters won't tell you anything useful.

Try reversing the wires to one but not both of the tweeters and give it a listen. You won't damage anything by doing that.

Those tweeters probably have those flimsy aluminum terminal tabs on the back. Be gentle, they can snap off easily.

 

[demoncamber]

Well, that's good to know. I put a reply in to one of the engineers at phase tech, awaiting his reply since yesterday. As for now I was just brainstorming.

He did originally reply saying that one of the tweeters were in fact wired out of phase, and that's how this adventure started, but after opening the speaker up and seeing both tweeters wired exactly the same, I was kind of lost at that point. Just wanted to ask here in case there was something I was just not familiar with.

Affirmative, they do have the flimsy aluminum tabs