Questions about minor placement diff for tweeters and connects

[craig]

Just curious, i recently got a bunch of glue and excess old wires off the solder point for my tweeters on my dynaco A25's . I noticed some of the same problems on left channel as well but not sound wise just had some glue and excess wire from old wires at solder point. Why did the sound improve so much after i did this ? Was it the excess old wire at solder point or the glue ? when soldering in tweeters is it best to have wire wrapped around post before soldering or just solder it in ? I forgot weather red (hot side) of tweeter was put in on left to right or right to left, does this subtlety matter ? If i decide to do this in future too a different pair how dangerous is it ? as far as risking the speakers quality ? or is a solder point a solder point ? Whats a good way to test tweeters ? thanks so much guys

[JKent]

Glad you got 'em fixed! Neatness in soldering and electronics work in general is important. It could be the glue and/or old wires were causing a bad connection or you may have had a cold solder joint. Remember to heat the work--not the solder, then let the solder flow through the joint.

I'm not sure about your left or right question. You should observe the polarity in the schematic if you have one. If you don't, use the original wiring as a guide.If you're not sure how it was originally wired, the negative side of the tweeter should be common with the negative side of the woofer in most cases BUT you can experiment with tweeter polarity to see which sounds better. Some AR speakers purposely reversed the tweeter's polarity. Just make sure both speakers are wired the same.

As far as testing tweeters, I usually test the DCR with an ohm meter first. The pair should match pretty well. Then I connect the tweeter to my amp and play a CD at low volume just to make sure everything sounds OK.

AFAIK, playing music straight into a driver will not harm it so long as you keep the volume at a low level.

Kent