Positive/negative speaker terminals

[Davies31]

I have bought a car with a stereo that didnt work. I have removed this and labled up all the wires that were in the back. i.e;-

Permenant live
Ignition live
Grnd
Left Front -
Left front +
Right front -
Right front +
Left rear -
Left rear +
Right rear -
Right rear +

A pair of din (red and white) leads for the Sony CD Changer
Aerial lead
Data cable for Sony CD Changer

I am bidding on a period stereo on Ebay presently that doesnt come with any wiring diagram/instuctions etc.

My question is this;- Is the wide spade connector on the speakers the + terminal and the - the narrow? or vice versa.

I have wired all the speakers up with the red stripe on the speaker cable to the wide spade, so it doesnt matter which is which but I will obviously need to know for the connection to the stereo.

Anyone know?

Thanks,
Jim

[Davies31]

Ok. Stop press. I hooked an AA battery up to them all and it seems that the positives on all the speakers (in this car at least) are wide spade positive terminal. Just need a wiring diagram for the stereo now...........

Another question though. Has anyone tried mounting tweeters in the side mirror trim panel? Any success. Don't bother. Whats the consensus?

[mrLEE30]

hooking a battery to them will not identify which is positive and negative. Generally speaking the negstive wires have a black strip and the positives a coloured stripe.

on the headunit you buy it does not matter which way round you connect as long as you connect them all the same way, only if you kmix and match positives and negaitrives will you get a cancelling effect

[miniblob]

I have been told in the past that you can tell from hooking a small battery to a speaker - one way will make the cone push out and reversed will make the cone retract - can't remember which way is which though!!

Also, it can make quite a difference reversing them, depending on your setup, because it effectively reverses the phase of the speaker.
You can sometimes gain (the effect of) more bass (or maybe midrange on these small units), by reversing the phase of one speaker and not the other.
It's worth trying them both ways round if you can and see what they sound like in different combinations. Some will definately sound better than others

[Davies31]

mrLEE30. I have wired up the speakers already and all with the red stripe on the wide spade as I said in the original post. But you are right, as long as they are all the same it doesn't matter.

miniblob. This was what I was after. As the speakers are all wired up the same I didnt want to wire them all up to the head unit wrongly and end up with no bass and little or no mid-range. I didn't want to just suck it and see on the stereo as I was afraid I might damage the speakers. But if you think it won't damage them to try either way then it's no dramas!

Just give it a go then.......

[miniblob]

Only thing that will damage the speaker really (normally) is distortion, so as long as you don't just whack it on full volume to find out, you'll be fine!!

Won't harm anything either way round, but you may find a gain from playing about with it!!

Also, not sure if i'm right, but i think the wire with the stripe was normally to go on the negative side - but again, i may be wrong, as i thought it was normally a black stripe on speaker cable!! So that probably confuses rather than helps! lol!

[Davies31]

No. That's great. Just what I wanted to hear actually. The main thing I was afraid of was destroying expensive, new speakers whilst installing them.

That would be too costly a learning curve for me!