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Why is my PA Speaker not working?

This is one of the most common questions fielded by our Technical guys during the day!  Of course there are many possible reasons why, but one of the first avenues of investigation should be to check your speaker to see if you have blown it.  We understand that calling in and speaking with someone in tech support can sometimes be a hassle.  Therefore, we wanted to publish a quick step by step tutorial of how you can check it yourself and confirm or eliminate this as the problem.

1.  These first thing you will need to do is to carefully remove the speaker from the cabinet and inspect the spider to verify that it is connected to the basket contiguously with no separation.  (The spider is the suspension between the back of the cone and the basket, right above the magnet).

2.  Next,  you will need to place a finger and a thumb from each hand around the dust cover in the center of the cone on the front of the speaker.  Press down lightly! Allow the voice coil to move down with the pressure, just a quarter of an inch or so, and then rebound with no pressure.  This movement should be smooth without any noticeable interference between the moving parts.  If you hear any noise other than air movement, then there is reason for concern.

3.  The third and final test involves the use of a 9 volt battery.  Obtain a 9 volt battery.  The terminals on the 9 volt battery line up with the terminals on the back of the speaker.  Touch the terminals on the battery to the terminals on the speaker.  The speaker should move at least 1/8″ .  If it does move without any ‘scrubbing’ noise, the speaker is good.  If it does not move or does move accompanied by a ‘scrubbing’ noise, then you have a blown speaker.

This is the most effective and quickest way to tell whether or not an audio event has caused your speaker to blow.  Again, it is one of the most common questions we take in the Seismic Audio Speakers tech department.  We thought maybe you all would find it useful in the event you were having issues with your PA speakers.  As always, we welcome you to call us and we will do anything to help you and get you the sound you want.

-SA