Blown speaker, I think?

Generally when a driver goes it will give you notice before hand. There are sounds that it will put out that will be a warning sign (most of the time).

If your pre and XLR are still working I would do the following.

1) Pull off your speaker grill and LIGHTLY push around the outside of the center of the speaker cone with one finger on each side of the dust cover ( the little round bubble in the center of the speaker). Just like giving the peace sign then push in with the bubble in between the 2 finger.

If its nice, easy and smooth chances are your driver is ok. If its rough and gravely feeling or wont move at all then the driver is gone.

2) If the driver is good I would pull it out slowly and check the wires connecting to the rear of it. I have had them come loose on me a few times in the past. If this is the case you may look at a habit I developed a long time ago which is no matter what cab I get I always open up the box and solder the connections up. This will make sure it doesnt happen again and this includes during a show which greatly sucks as if you couldnt tell.
3) If all connections are good and the speaker feels good you probably have a down power section or a loose connection in the amp itself. Take care of these things first. Then we will see where your at.

 

Not that I can think of. Once inside the amp,in the actual electronics there can be a shock hazard but not generally in what im talking about. Just be sure its unplugged and you should be golden.

 

I think they meant you should actually push the cone itself, not rub the cover. If a speaker has a mechanical failure, ( and it would have to be a fairly big one to stop working all the sudden in your case) then by pushing on the cone you should be able to feel a problem. A speaker with a mechanical problem will have a gritty or scratchy "feel" to it but more often than not the cone itself won't move very much, if at all, if it's "blown". Also, make sure the tinsel leads are still attached to the voice coil, that's another common problem.

 

It's easy to try another cabinet, even a non-bass speaker as long as you keep the level low. Either that or another amp to check your cabinet.

Since it's either the amp or the cabinet, switch one of them to see what's up.

As for the speaker motion when you push it: You're trying to gently push it in and out like it normally moves when it plays. You can feel a scraping inside or it's smooth.

Note that moving smoothly doesn't guarantee it's good, but if it scrapes it's definitely bad.

 

Ok, as for speaker "feel" what your trying to gauge is piston movement as the speaker moves in and out. The center of the driver should move in and out freely. Basically your checking for free movement in the motor. Make sure of the feel of this.

There should be 2 wires connected to the 2 posts on the rear of the driver. These are connected right? Also make sure those 2 wires are connected at the head unit.


If you are sure of the above,

How old is your amp? Do you still have a warranty? If so just take it in to have it looked at.

If not, I would pull the head section out and poke around for any loose wireing. Give a good look over and make sure you dont see anything that looks burnt or loose.

Once you have the head section out (its alot easier than it sounds) you can actually plug in your speker and a bass and the amp and play with the head section out. While doing this I would give it a good shake and some tender "love taps" to make sure it not a loose connection or anything that you can see going wrong.

If you still have nothing its time to send it to a repair person. I would however find another driver (speaker cab) to aattach it to since your not real sure what its supposed to feel like. This way you can make sure its not the driver itself.

Once you have done this it will be alot cheaper to ship just the head unit as opposed to the whole cab.

 

Sounds like the head, not the speaker. Check for a blown fuse.

And that means: look FIRST in the owner's manual for the head, which you of course have retained and carefully filed...or if bought used, you went online and printed it out, then filed it.

 

Not really because the power section of the head could be bad. Thats why I said find another speaker, just about any other speaker to confirm.

 

This may sound stupid, but did you check the speaker cable? I recently thought I had killed my glockenklang cab when I played 2 octaves below a low B with a HOG and it died (no sound at all), and it turned out to be the stupid cable... don't know how it died since it has worked fine for 2 years and I never touch it, but it did.

 

The cooling fan is there for a reason, and a fan going out can cause the power section to overheat. The FX out works, but that only checks the preamp section of the amp. You need to:

Power your speaker with another amp.

and

Power another speaker with your amp.

The will tell you if the prob is with the amp or the speaker, and your recovery strategy very much depends on the result of that test. It should be the very first thing you do, before you start poking around on the speaker cone, opening up the amp, or anything else.

 

Active or passive bass?

 

I dont agree with this. As he is working on a combo amp most of the time you are not afforded speaker jacks. This means chances are good you will have to pull the speaker out to test it anyway. By "poking around" on the driver many times you can tell if its blown.

Jacob, at low volumes you should not hurt anything your just looking for signal/sound to see if the driver works or not.

Your not trying to run another amp your trying to test your speaker itself and the amp itself independant of each other. You can believe and do what you want im just trying to help out man.

As mentioned above the if the fan is not working you have burned up the amp but maybe just could be a fuse or something. So look for those things and check them out. Keep us posted

 

DO NOT plug your speaker output into another amps input - you will blow the amps preamp section (at the least).

You need to find a speaker to plug your head into. As long as you are at a low volume, you will not blow up another speaker. You only need enough volume to confirm that signal is making it out of the power amp section of your head.

The test you already did (from the FX loop) only confirms that the preamp section is still working.

 

Cool. Just ruling out a dead battery in an active bass.