sl2000 tweeter problem after installing new interconnect

Bigbang

So... I bought a pair of SDA CRS+'s and have been enjoying them for the last two weeks. They didn't come with an interconnect cable so I temporarily stuck some speaker wire in the interconnect slots and taped it to secure it until I could install a more permanent solution.

Yesterday I installed a pair of new speak on connectors. I took the old interconnect termination out and drilled out a wider hole and installed the new connectors. Screwed them down, applied ample glue to seal them and put everything back together. I plugged in my new interconnect and to my shock my sl2000's (both of them) started making this horrible distortion/crackling at about 70db. Anything lower and they sound great.

I know these tweeters are not ideal and need to invest in some rdo-194's soon but does anyone have any idea why both 2000's would do this after replacing my interconnect cable. The 2000's are not even in the dimensional array, so the interconnect replacement should not have played any part in it. Could I have bumped the crossover and hurt the poly or some other solder joint? Does anyone have any idea why this specific problem would happen with both tweeters after an interconnect change? Weird, right?

TennMan

Are your CRS+ pin/blade connectors? If so you should NOT use two wires to connect the speakers together. One wire between the pins is what you need. No wire between the blades of each speaker. IF you have two wires going between the speakers stop using them now!

Schurkey

Pin-Blade:
What harm would come from connecting the two blades together? It'd be the same as having a common-ground amp, but with less resistance. The blades are connected to the negative speaker terminals within the speaker cabinets, connecting the two blades together with a wire is electrically the same as connecting the negative terminals together with a receiver/amplifier chassis.

Now, get the polarity wrong in one of the cabinets--pin from one cabinet connected to blade of the other cabinet, instead of pin to pin--and evil stuff is bound to happen due to a more-or-less dead short across the common-ground amp. I'd expect the amp would fry before causing tweeter problems, but what do I know?

Blade/Blade
Again, polarity has to be correct. Had a guy mix up the wires on a (1B???) a few weeks ago, and the speakers sounded terrible. Colored wire of one speaker (blue or black SDA socket wire in that case, depending on which channel) connects to the white wire of the SDA socket in the other cabinet . This REQUIRES two conductors in the SDA interconnect cable.

Bigbang

They are blade/blade. I should have added that.

Schurkey

Did you wire blue to (opposite channel) white, black to (opposite channel) white?

Bigbang

I confess my stupidity so that others may learn. I have black left going to blue right. And I have white going to white. I'll switch this and report back.

Bigbang

That was it. I switched the pins on the IC and now everything works perfect. It's a mystery to me what the would mess with the high pass but I'm always learning.

Anthony Hinton

Ok, I have a question. I've got a pair of sda's that are blade/blade I made my own cable, are you saying that the cable doesn't go big blade to big blade, and narrow blade to narrow blade?

Should it go big blade to narrow blade?

I've got a crackling in the sda tweeter on both speakers, I've swapped them around to no avail, I thought I might have a crossover problem, you mean It might be as simple as swapping one end of my homemade cable around.?

Bigbang

Others can chime in but yes the original IC cable was crossed. Let us know if that helped. I love when my stupidity helps others.

Schurkey

Bigbang wrote: »

That was it. I switched the pins on the IC and now everything works perfect. It's a mystery to me what the would mess with the high pass but I'm always learning.

First guess: It wasn't messing with the high-pass in the crossover. It was stressing the amplifier so much that the amp's distortion went sky-high. On a blade/blade system like my 1Bs, reversing the wires connects the Left channel + to the Right channel +, and the Left channel - to Right channel - (after passing through the SDA capacitors 'n' inductors.)

Anthony Hinton wrote: »

Ok, I have a question. I've got a pair of sda's that are blade/blade I made my own cable, are you saying that the cable doesn't go big blade to big blade, and narrow blade to narrow blade?

Should it go big blade to narrow blade?

I've got a crackling in the sda tweeter on both speakers, I've swapped them around to no avail, I thought I might have a crossover problem, you mean It might be as simple as swapping one end of my homemade cable around.?

Bigbang wrote: »

Others can chime in but yes the original IC cable was crossed.

The CABLE isn't crossed...the wires to the SDA sockets are different Left vs. Right. The cable is wired big-blade to big-blade, the wires are reversed in the SDA sockets at the cabinet. The cabinet wiring has big blade attached to colored wire on one side, other side has big blade attached to white. Same deal with narrow blade--colored wire on one side, white wire on the other.

For my 1Bs, the SDA socket wiring in the cabinet is like this:
Large blade (blue wire) on top of small blade (white wire) = Right channel cabinet

Small blade (black wire) on top of large blade (white wire) = Left channel cabinet


I'd be concerned about defective tweeters in your case. I suppose it could be a defective crossover--cold solder joint, cracked trace on the PC board, etc...but I'd suspect tweeters first.

Schurkey

Anthony Hinton wrote: »

I've got a crackling in the sda tweeter on both speakers, I've swapped them around to no avail, I thought I might have a crossover problem, you mean It might be as simple as swapping one end of my homemade cable around.?

As so often happens, I ran out of edit time on my previous post.

If you've swapped the tweeters from SDA to Stereo, and the problem stays with the SDA position, it's almost certainly a crossover problem. I'm looking at the schematic for the SDA 1A, the SDA tweeters have a polyswitch. Seems to me crackling is a symptom of defective polyswitches; as is premature cut-out. I suppose rapid opening/closing of the polyswitch would sound like "crackling".

Anyway, if those are 1As, (or another model using polyswitches for tweeter protection) that's where I'd start.

Bigbang

Thanks Schurkey for your help.

Anthony Hinton

Schurkey wrote: »

As so often happens, I ran out of edit time on my previous post.

If you've swapped the tweeters from SDA to Stereo, and the problem stays with the SDA position, it's almost certainly a crossover problem. I'm looking at the schematic for the SDA 1A, the SDA tweeters have a polyswitch. Seems to me crackling is a symptom of defective polyswitches; as is premature cut-out. I suppose rapid opening/closing of the polyswitch would sound like "crackling".

Anyway, if those are 1As, (or another model using polyswitches for tweeter protection) that's where I'd start.

Thank you. Thank you very much.