Soundboard(s) get(s) quiet

[dexios]

Hey everyone! I've been reading in these forums for a while, but this is my first post...
I was hoping my first post was going to be a "Hey everyone, check out my first saber!" But alas, I can't find an answer to my problem in what's already posted... So here goes:

I have an MR Darth Maul board that I had going nice and strong, and one of the wires pulled out. When I replaced it, the sound got REALLY quiet. I mean hold it up to your ear and juuust make out the sounds... I'm using a TCSS speaker, and it was incredibly loud when I had it all hooked up originally. This was about 3 weeks ago...

In the meantime, I bought an obi hasbro and thought I'd mess around with it. It too was going strong (this one on a radio shack speaker; I was in between TCSS orders ), until a wire pulled out. Can you guess? When I soldered it back on, the sound got REALLY quiet again. Boo. Any help would be phenomenal, especially since my wife is getting a little suspicious about me replacing my board yet again...

Thanks!

[Master Valon]

Hello, and welcome to the forums! You may want to wait to get expert advice, since I'm relatively new here, but I would imagine its because there isn't enough surface area between wire and contact on the board, so its a weak connection. But, it would help to know which wire specifically got pulled out, too...

[dexios]

Thanks for the quick response! On the MR board, I think it was a switch wire originally, but then more came out because I decided to replace them with slightly thicker wire (brilliant! I know... :S) On the hasbro board it was a speaker wire...

[Skottsaber]

And this is only happening when you use your TCSS speaker?
Try replacing the speaker and see if it becomes loud again. You may have accidentally damaged something in the speaker itself.

[dexios]

Well... I haven't tried a different speaker... I will pick up another one and test them both again... I'll post an update tomorrow after I do it and let you know if it helps...

[Loachri MacTalabh]

A stereo speaker would work well enough to see if that is your problem.

[dexios]

So... the new speaker didn't make a difference. But the more I've been reading, the more I realize that I've been using the wrong tools for the job... (my soldering gun is rated at 75W... yikes) So, I figure I probably deep fried my circuits, and I bought a new soldering iron(20W). Thanks for the input, I guess a bigger hammer isn't always better...

[slothfurnace]

This happened to me when I got started building sabers. I had run my speaker wires to the grey speaker wire, and the ground. Not the grey speaker wire and positive. I fixed that and the sound came back good as new.

[dexios]

Don't I use the SPK+ and SPK- to the positive and negative speaker leads respectively?

[Arkhan]

Slothfurnace was talking about the HASBRO FX board. The Hasbro FX board uses BATTERY+ and SPK- leads.

If your board has SPK+ and SPK- leads, then you should use them.