Soldered Driver Connections

machone

Several years ago before I joined this forum I found that my blade/blade interconnect cable had a broken wire inside of the male plug. I removed plastic from the plug until I could get at the break and soldered it back together. THEN I decided to open the speaker enclosure and solder ALL of the connectors to their tabs. I did this to both the drivers and the crossovers. Now that I am going to rebuild the crossovers should I stay with soldering or desolder, attempt to clean for the tabs and crimp on new connectors?

ooklaa

what makes you feel more comfortable? for me soldering..

machone

I upgraded one of the sl1000 tweeters with a 194 today. Once soldered stay with solder. I heated and removed the connectors from the tabs, cut the connectors off the wires and reattached the wires by soldering.

boston1450

Cool. What is the speaker ? Did you do both & how does it compare to the sl1000 to your ears ? I changed mine over on the SDA1c's & RTA15's i dropped in the 198's. Noticed right away better sound on both. Well worth the upgrade IMO

ROHfan

boston1450 wrote: »

Cool. What is the speaker ? Did you do both & how does it compare to the sl1000 to your ears ? I changed mine over on the SDA1c's & RTA15's i dropped in the 198's. Noticed right away better sound on both. Well worth the upgrade IMO

Good enough for me. Now I'm gonna do that to mine, as well. My OCD does NOT thank you.

Schurkey

boston1450 wrote: »

I changed mine over on the SDA1c's & RTA15's i dropped in the 198's.

How did you get 198s into the 1C?

boston1450

No. For the 15's. 198 Replaced the sl3000's. 194 on the sl2000. Just rambling on trying to figure out what speaker OP used.

machone

Sda-1a with sl-1000 teeters. Disconnected the SDA tweeters. Upgraded the stereo tweeters to 194s. Only got one speaker finished so I can't comment on the sound yet.

Joey Ward

Hi Machone...Would you like to sell the sl-1000 tweeter, just blew one of the sl-1000 on the mointoe 7c.

machone

Well I finished upgrading the remaining tweeter last night. In review; I have pulled the fuses for the SDA tweeters and upgraded the original SL-1000 stereo tweeters with RDO194-1s. They are certainly not as intense but seem to be distant and somewhat veiled. Is this what you guys have experienced? FYI: The speakers are original except for this upgrade.

strokin

boston1450 wrote: »

Cool. What is the speaker ? Did you do both & how does it compare to the sl1000 to your ears ? I changed mine over on the SDA1c's & RTA15's i dropped in the 198's. Noticed right away better sound on both. Well worth the upgrade IMO

Did you already have your crossovers done first before tweeters, or have you done them yet?
The reason I ask is, I just replaced my sl2000's with 194's in my sdac1's and so far I have about 60 hrs on them. The day I replaced them, the highs were clean and bright, but after about 10 hours they started sounding dull and somewhat lifeless. Was wondering if maybe my stock crossovers could have anything to do with it.
would appreciate any input.

boston1450

Ive got around 30 hours in them & they are way better than the 2000's by far. I did no upgrades to crossovers as its not in my budget others may have had that experience ?????

strokin wrote: »

boston1450 wrote: »

Cool. What is the speaker ? Did you do both & how does it compare to the sl1000 to your ears ? I changed mine over on the SDA1c's & RTA15's i dropped in the 198's. Noticed right away better sound on both. Well worth the upgrade IMO

Did you already have your crossovers done first before tweeters, or have you done them yet?
The reason I ask is, I just replaced my sl2000's with 194's in my sdac1's and so far I have about 60 hrs on them. The day I replaced them, the highs were clean and bright, but after about 10 hours they started sounding dull and somewhat lifeless. Was wondering if maybe my stock crossovers could have anything to do with it.
would appreciate any input.

strokin wrote: »

boston1450 wrote: »

Cool. What is the speaker ? Did you do both & how does it compare to the sl1000 to your ears ? I changed mine over on the SDA1c's & RTA15's i dropped in the 198's. Noticed right away better sound on both. Well worth the upgrade IMO

machone

I noted in an earlier post that I had previously (years ago) soldered all of the connectors to the tabs on the drivers, tweeters and x-overs. Now I am disassembling the speakers to rebuild everything.

As I was heating and pulling the soldered connectors from the tabs I grabbed the wire instead of the connector and the wire slid out of the connector. This happened more than once. I know that the connector will expand with heat but this basically fell out. IMO this should not happen to a crimped connection.

I am not advocating soldering connectors to tabs (it does create a mess) but when using connectors perhaps the wire should be soldered to the connector.

Schurkey

machone wrote: »

when using connectors perhaps the wire should be soldered to the connector.

I have heard that a properly-crimped connection is actually better than a soldered connection. I kind of remember that this was in relation to Mil-Spec hardware; and the spec was that the connections NOT be soldered.

I'll accept that this may be true--I'm in no position to judge--but in MY workshop, nothing says "secure for the long term" like nicely-melted solder over the top of a crimped connection. I don't advocate soldering a quick-disconnect to the item it connects to, but I'll solder the wire into the body of the q-d coupler.

machone

I am upgrading to Cardas binding posts. Using a soldering gun I soldered the negative wire; no problem. But the hole in the connector post is too small for four positive wires. The only thing I can think to do is to solder a short 14ga solid wire to the connector and then solder the four wires to the 14ga solid wire. Help!