Trying to connect speakers

[Guest Geoman]

I've had these EPI speakers my grandfather owned ever since I moved into my current house. I was going to plug them into a B+O sound system, but when I found out that company discontinued the model that hooked with the housewide stereo system...so I bagged any idea of hooking that up.

I used a boombox for awhile, until mom came home with tons of books and my great great uncle's stereo system. I tried hooking the speakers he had and the speakers my granfather had with some speaker wire mom had lying around the basement.

I tried hooking the speakers

1. EPI 100V

2. Sony SSMB105

To a Pioneer SX255R With a Sony 5 disc CD changer.

The speaker wire I had was copper colored on one side, and iron colored on the other. Not knowing which was + or -, I tried both ways and got the same bad result. The sound was distant and I had to crank the system to "max" just to hear anything.

Is there some component I'm missing, is the speaker wire bad, or was I given wonky parts because I'm family?

[Guest gruss]

Volume wise, switching the polarity of the wires shouldnt really make a difference, doesnt matter which side you use for positive, just make it the same on all the connections like copper = positive (red) on all the connections and you'll be fine.

It almost sounds like you had the cd player hooked up to the wrong imputs or chose the wrong input and were hearing the "bleed through" from the reciever and not the actual source. Alot of mass market components dont completely serparate the sources.

I would double check all the connections again, and give it a shot, I think it would be highly unlikely that gramps completely blew out all the drivers on both speakers, and typically even blown would not do as you described.

I think the "wonky" parts theory may be correct

[Guest Geoman]

Actually what I did was pretty stupid. My uncle's receiver has an "A" set for speakers, and a "B" set, well I figured that much out. However, I was testing the sound by plugging in one speaker.

The problem was the connection from CD player was connected as if there were two speakers....so I had tinny distant on full volume....until I pressed the "tuner" button. Which gave me a full 1 second blast of full audio in my right ear.

OW.

Thankfully I haven't gone deaf in that ear, or have constant ringing, but I'm giving my ear a break. When I checked on really low volume and left out the "left" connection between the base and the CD player, the volume came in beautifully. In my left ear, which unlike my right ear isn't considering divorce papers.

Oh well, at least it wasn't as bad as when I got a putter to the jewels at full swing, but still,...OW.

[Guest Geoman]

Ok new problem.

Ihooked everything up, and the left speaker works great, but when I used the "bass boost" the speaker on the right was rattling and not playing as loudly as the other. If I have to bring this speaker in for maintenance, where can I take it?

[Guest palomar]

Although I'm obviously guessing, it sounds like the surround on the woofer is rotted. EPI's (except for the very early models, which used butyl rubber) used foam for its surrounds. And if one of the woofers has a rotted surround, chances are the other one is not far behind.

You can either refoam them yourself, using kits from Parts Express (or any number of places), which is what I did with mine, or you can have someone refoam them.

Gary