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New guy with speaker question...

Isiah

Isiah

New Member
Hi there. I've been stalking this site for a while, but this is my first post.

Vintage audio is new to me, but I recently decided to get into it a bit, I guess to relive sitting around as s kid at my aunts house listening to old records.

I have two questions about a set of wharfedale e30 speakers I just purchased. Ill start by saying they sound nice, but honestly I don't have much to compare them to since I've been using satellite speakers for the last 15 years or so.

When hooked to a marantz 2230, one of the two woofers vibrates slowly while the other sounds normally, and the other speaker does the opposite with its two woofers.

So it could be the receiver, right? So I hooked them up to a modern Sony surround sound unit and only one of the two woofers on both units work, opposite of each other as in, the right speaker the upper woofer works and the other does not and the left side is vice versa.

I hope that my questions make sense? Just not sure if the speakers are all supposed to work together, or if they need some work.
 
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Welcome! :thumbsup:

Without knowing more, I'd say one woofer in each is blown. What you're probably seeing, in relation to the dead one moving, is the pressure change in the cabinet from the good one working.

Would have to pull one of the suspects and ohm it out on a multimeter to be sure. If you don't have a multimeter, even the cheapest of the cheap from Harbor Freight will do in this situation.
 
Agreed....best thing to do is pull the drivers and see if one is passive (no magnets/coil). If they all look the same, put an ohm meter on them and see if you get any reading....
 
Thanks for the replies gentlemen. I'll pull them out soon and test them. If they are 8 ohm speakers, what's the tolerances? Plus or minus an ohm? Or less?
 
So I had some extra time today and took the drivers out to test them. First thing I noticed was that one driver in each cabinet wasn't even hooked up. I pulled out the multimeter and there is no continuity through either of the two that weren't connected and about 11.5 ohms on the other two.

So, where do I go from here?
 
Strange. Just to be clear, these drivers that are not hooked up and have no reading on the terminals....just to make certain, do they have magnets and are there lead wires going from the terminals to the cone? Just want to make sure these are not passive radiators. also, I would expect that if someone 'disconnected' these drivers, there should be some wires loose in the cabinet that are not plugged into anything (unless they daisy-chained off the other drivers that are hooked up..
 
Yes, they look identical to the other drivers and there are loose wires in the cabinets. not sure why a previous owner would've unhooked these? My guess is I need to get the voice coils rebuilt?
 
Not familiar with your speakers, but most likely woofers are 16 ohm models wired in parallel to give 8 ohms. Coils are probably shot, but make sure you check the coil lead wires for loose or broken connections. Maybe check auction sites for working woofers to replace if not repairable.
 
I couldn't find a wiring diagram to know if they're wired in series or not, but it does say 8 ohm on the back.
 

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Put the two woofers that work into one cabinet and hook them up, then connect that one speaker up and use a mono source to hear what it is supposed to sound like. That's what I would do.

Xtinc's observation that they are likely 16 ohm drivers is a good theory. Speakers are rated by impedance, not simple resistance. When you measure DC Resistance (DCR) then they measure lower than impedance, thus your result of 11.5 ohms indicates an impedance higher than that. Two 16 ohm speakers connected parallel yield an 8 ohm impedance result, so it makes sense.
 
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