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speakers and cables

this is about me being a loser and problem creator.

I finally got a 2nd subwoofer and I was excited to hook it up. Well, not too excited. I knew it would be a pain to hook it up. I was excited to hear it. I spent over 90 minutes connecting the speaker wires to my power amp. When I turned it on, the left channel was gone. It blew the fuse. I disconnected everything, replaced the fuse, hooked it up again. It worked for 10 seconds, blew the fuse again.

The way I hooked them up was I went from the sub speaker out from both subwoofers, rolled the left and right side wires together so I had 4 wires that I connected to the left and right plus and minus channels - speaker binders on the power amp. What are my options? My preamp has no sub out. Nor my amp.

Stupid question: should I just go from left to left on one sub and right to right on the other sub?

grislybutter
immatthewj
2,040 posts
 

Okay, that’s as described previously and what i was thinking and looks like pic 2 of your picture post (except that you didn’t have the speakers in that diagram)::

speaker wire out of L speaker post in amp into L sub and speaker wire out of L sub out to L speaker & repeat for R side.

But, MORE IMPORTANTLY: how do TWO subs sound?

 

 

grislybutter OP
3,096 posts
 

@immatthewj I need to find the right gain but they sound good. A bit shaky/buzzy on their flimsy legs so I should find a better platform. 

I listened to a pair of $60 Celestion F3s for 6 weeks and I just switched back to my Evoke 20s, they sound extremely bright, suddenly.  

I like the Celestions overall better but I am going to give them a week. 

What I like about the subwoofers is that they very subtle. (Unlike others I tried they wanted to crack the ceiling.) I don't need a lot of bass, just that little extra the bookshelf speakers can't fill.

carlsbad2's avatar
carlsbad2
1,623 posts
 

I would stay away from y splitters.  Y splitters hook 2 sets of drivers in parallel, which halves the inductance.  So the amp current doubles going into the low impedene load and it  trips.  You are lucky your amp has a breaker and does't just fail from the high current.

Never hook 2 loads up in parallel to one set of speaker outputs.

Jerry

grislybutter OP
3,096 posts
 

thanks @carlsbad2! I didn't know this. Also noting the parallel - serial difference, I am a slow learner but I don't forget :)

 

immatthewj
2,040 posts
 

Y splitters hook 2 sets of drivers in parallel, which halves the inductance. So the amp current doubles going into the low impedene load and it trips. You are lucky your amp has a breaker and does’t just fail from the high current.

Never hook 2 loads up in parallel to one set of speaker outputs.

But the ’Y’ splitters are not going to be connected to the amp, they are going to be used in the RCA outs of the preamp in order to send a full frequency signal to the subs and then also the RCA ins of the amp?

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