Premium Speaker newb question.

[gazbot]

Hi guys, I recently picked up a few display model Master Replica sabers.

One of them, the mace windu, had an issue with the sound cutting in and out, I ended up getting another mace later on in mint condition, and swapped the battery/speaker packs, now the old display sounded good and the new one sounded bad.

So in my mind that made it a speaker problem I did some research found this sight and ordered the"Premium Speaker ", and got it quickly shipped to me.

My question is this, I have never done any electronic work, I had to by a soldering gun just for this project. I disconnected the old speaker there we two wires a yellow and a green, they ran to 2 blobs of solder presumably covering the connectors for the speaker.

the new speaker had 4 blobs of solder on it.

I looked on-line at the diagram for the speaker that is up here, and it shows a red and black wire running to the area between the 1st and 2nd blob, and the 3rd and 4rth blob.

So I am assuming, that I need to lay the exposed metal part of the wire in that area, and cover it with solder to hold it, but how do I know which wire goes on which side, since the diagram shows red and black and I have yellow and green?

I know I am a total newb for asking this, and I did try to search for this topic here first but couldn't find it, so sorry if it is a dup thread, and THANKS in advance for any help you can offer!

[MoonDragn]

Doesn't matter. Pick one.

Speakers have no polarity unless they have a capacitor attached to them.

[swear000]

I don't know exactly why companies choose to color code the wires in strange ways. Try looking very closely at the speaker and see if any of the "blobs" have an indication as to being either positive and negative. Also, look at the soundboard closely and see if there is any indication (small white writing) of positive or negative.

Take your time and see if any determination can be made. I wouldn't want you to accidentally reverse the polarity and blow a good speaker.

Soldering is easy. Soldering "guns" are generally harder to work with. You may want to consider a pencil type iron in the near future. They should not be more than $10 at Radio Shack. Also, you want as much of a needle tip as possible.

Keep a wet sponge nearby where you solder to wipe off any excess solder. Soldering braid and soldering tinner/flux are also a good idea. They can be found relatively inexpensively at dealextreme.com.

When you solder, you heat the iron till it is very hot. When you touch the tip to one of the blobs of solder, the blob will melt into a silver pool. When it looks wet, you want to place the wire directly on the pool and let the solder cover the wire. Then remove the tip of the soldering iron and let the pool re-harden. Adding more solder to the existing solder on the board may give you problems like a cold joint (no electrical conductivity) or a short circuit (a big blob touching the big blob next to it. Practice on junky electronics (i.e. old calculator) till you feel you understand how the solder will behave.

Also, check youtube.com for soldering tutorials. They are like 10:00 and will give you lots of good pointers. You will become an expert overnight!

[gazbot]

ok, well thanks for the responses guys!

I actually returned the soldering gun for a needle type before i started, and I'm glad I did.

As for the whole pos negative wire thing, even if didn't matter I wanted to be safe and opened up the battery compartment but to no avail there were no markings, I didn't want to open the hilt to get at the sound card to check since this is my first endevor I wanted to keep it simple if I could. One thing I noticed was that my yellow wire had broken off a bit at the end when i removed it, I saw the old speaker had the wire bit on the right connetor, so I gambled that the new speaker would have a similar set-up and used the yellow wire on the right connector. Either I guessed right, or as suggested before it didn't matter because it worked, and works without the cutting in/out problem I had before so problem fixed.

the post mortem though is that the cover for the speaker doesn't really fit anymore, I was thinking of sanding a bit off the of the post inside since that seems to be what is keeping it from locking into place over the speaker.

the other thing is, while the speaker works fine, it is certainly NOT louder than the stock MR one, I powered up both mace sabers I have 1 with the stock and one with the newly installed tcss one, and the seemed about the same, if anything, then new one might be a tiny tiny bit quieter. maybe this is because the cover is not fit snug yet?

either way I would still reccomend this speaker as a replacement part, but as an upgrade for a speaker that is working I don't know...

[gazbot]

I sanded down the post on the battery holder a bit and now the cover fits fine, did not effect the volume of the sound however.

I did notice that my maces are both louder than my darth maul, so maybe it would be a good upgrade speaker for other MR models?

[Lord Dottore Matto]

I've never noted them to be louder than MR speakers, but the certainly are louder than the radio shack speakers.

[xwingband]

It shouldn't be louder. It may sound more clear and better quality, but not louder.

The reason behind that is that the MR board inside only gives a certain amount of power to the speaker. Say it gives .5W...

Now, the RS ones are .1W, MR's .5W and the premium one 1W. So the RS one is limited to the .1W it's rated at but both the MR and premium one will do .5W. You have more headroom on the premium one, but the MR board just doesn't drive that.

[gazbot]

Ah well that explains it thanks for the clarification. I didn't mean to be-smirtch the quality of what I got from tcss. It works fine, and was shipped fast, I just misunderstood about the volume issue.

[BuildaVader]

I hope no one minds me rehashing a question about the premium speaker sold in the store. I'm thinking about replacing my original speaker in my 2005 Master Replica Darth Vader saber.

Reading the last couple of posts now makes sense that if the MR board can only drive the speaker to say .5w but the speaker is rated for 1w, the new "Premium speaker will only be so loud and not be any louder than the original.

So...would such a speaker swap be a waste of time or would the sound quality be noticeable enough to make it worth while? Personally the speaker is just too quiet for me the way it currently is and had hoped it would make it louder. I'm glad I read this thread before being disappointed.

[equinox13]

i think it all depends on resonance in this case - the premium speaker is definitely louder, but it'll take an inch or so of resonance space to actually make it significantly louder. i don't have any experience with the MR speakers yet, but from what i've heard comparing them to the econo boards, just swapping them out gives a bit better sound quality and loudness. hopefully someone that's done this with an MR board will pipe up soon. ^_^ good luck!