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SWR Black Beauty Problems - Reuse Cab

cmichaelis

cmichaelis

Mar 9, 2017
8
0
#1
Hi! Quick question for anyone who has had an SWR Black Beauty... I've got one here that seems to be on its way out; the passive input jack no longer works, the sub-octave no longer works (light will turn blue, but no magic), and lately it's starting to get crackly and distorted on the sound. I wired up the cabinet to another amp head and the speaker sounds fine, so I'm thinking to reuse the cabinet (this is just for practice use, it never leaves the room). The wire leading to the cabinet is three-conductor; if I connect to the tip and furthest back (usually ground), I get sound out of the main speaker, but I can't figure out how to make use of the horn (I realize I'd probably need to use an external crossover or similar). The box is pretty well permanently closed, so I hate to break it open just to see how it's wired. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
 
#4
cmichaelis said:
Hi! Quick question for anyone who has had an SWR Black Beauty... I've got one here that seems to be on its way out; the passive input jack no longer works, the sub-octave no longer works (light will turn blue, but no magic), and lately it's starting to get crackly and distorted on the sound. I wired up the cabinet to another amp head and the speaker sounds fine, so I'm thinking to reuse the cabinet (this is just for practice use, it never leaves the room). The wire leading to the cabinet is three-conductor; if I connect to the tip and furthest back (usually ground), I get sound out of the main speaker, but I can't figure out how to make use of the horn (I realize I'd probably need to use an external crossover or similar). The box is pretty well permanently closed, so I hate to break it open just to see how it's wired. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Those symptoms sound like they could all be fixed with a good cleaning of all input and output jacks with DeOxit 5. Have you tried that? Don't neglect rarely used jacks such as the effects loop since that's often where the problem lies. Good luck, Bob
 
#5
A qualified service tech should be able to solve your amp problems. I'm afraid it's likely to be more than just the input jack.
 
#8
Just to follow back up on this... ended up pulling out the speaker from the front as suggested, and turned out there's already a pretty solid crossover in there. It's wired so that the three-conductor jack has the tip going straight to the 15", then the middle connects to the crossover which feeds into the horn (leaving the remaining connector as ground). That way you can send a slightly different signal to the crossover/horn, which is how the rocker switch to control the horn frequency range works. Anyway, replaced the bad head with something else, and it sounds great once again.
 

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