Speakon cables

[Jon Chewning]

I was wondering if anyone knew the wiring scheme of speakon connectors? I need a couple of cables to connect from the back of my power amp to my cabs. I've only found one website that carries them and I'm having a hard time parting with the $65 they want for two 3-footers. The local GC doesn't carry speakon cables but they do have the connectors, so I think I could just build a couple myself if I knew how to wire them.

I read (or misread) somewhere that they have 4 wires? I'm trying figger out how that would work. Anyone have any info on these suckers?

[brianrost]

Check out this info from the Crown amplifier web site about Speakon wiring:

ftp://135.145.196.17/pdf/amps/126986.pdf

[Jon Chewning]

Thanks Brian that did the job. Very good pdf. I'll probably want to just go ahead wire all four connections so I'll need to find some heavy guage 4 conductor wire.

[Edited by Jon Chewning on 10-27-2000 at 03:06 PM]

[michaeln]

Arrggghhhhh!!

Be careful, Andy wires the Acmes in a very non-standard way on the Speakon connectors, and if you wire the cables wrong the Acmes will throw a dead short across the output of your PLX-2402.

Let me dig up the info, I'll be right back.

[Jon Chewning]

Well I was gonna take things apart anyway to acertain the positive and negative posts. I'll postpone it until you come back with the inside info!

By the way, where did you get your speakons? Were they as pricey as I've noted above?

[michaeln]

I couldn't find the message where Andy explained how he wires the connectors on the Acmes... but I believe he shorts the +1 to the +2 and the -1 to the -2. Anyway, I can tell you what WILL work and what I did.

Buy a 10 foot speakon cable from Carvin:

http://www.carvin.com/cgi-bin/get.ex...'SSC')

...$24.99.

Cut it in half, then you'll have two 12 guage two-conductor 5 footers that each have a speakon on one end. You'll need to buy two more Speakon "NL4FC" connectors. You can buy those from Carvin too for $5.99 each, or get them from Markertek for a bit cheaper, less than $5.00 (but the freight will probably make it so it's cheaper to buy the cables and connectors from Carvin).

Then wire the red wire to the +1 and the black wire to the -1 on the new connectors, and you should be done.

I have a friend in LA who bought cables from Carvin for his Acme/PLX setup and he ran into the short problem I mentioned before. He said "all it took was snipping the connections on one of the pairs of connections (the 2+ and 2- ) for it to work right". I didn't run into that problem, but he did, so I'm not sure why.

[michaeln]

Here's Neutrik's instructions for wiring the Speakons (they are the manufacturers of the Speakon connectors):

http://www.neutrik.com/download/assembly/speakon.pdf

There is also info in the QSC PLX-series manual that came with your amp.

[Jon Chewning]

Thanks hoss, this is a much mo' betta solution... I'm all for not spending the cash if I don't have to.

Right now I'm using the binding posts out of the 2402 into the 1/4" jacks of the Acmes and I've already had a problem with the binding posts vibrating loose. Last Saturday night as I was setting up, one cabinet was silent. A looksee in the back of the amp showed one lead popped out. So I would like to avoid THAT problem.

[michaeln]

I had a dual banana fall out of one channel of the amp at a gig too, that was what inspired me to go the Speakon route. Once you get 'em built, you'll never have another speaker cable problem.