How to test a speaker cabinet?

[DeadSpeaker]

I have an old (vintage probably) speaker cabinet. It has 2 woofers and one tweeter. It is is all wired very simply with two 1/4 inch jacks going directing to one speaker and then wires going from that to the other one. The tweeter seems to have a resister of some kind in it's wire. The backs says "input= 65 watts" How should I test this? Do I need to buy a 65 watt amp?

[richie00boy]

Any amp will do. 65 watts is the most power it can take, not like a light bulb how much power it consumes.

[DeadSpeaker]

It didn't work when I plugged a stereo amp into it turned all the way up, but then again I did use cable that I made by cutting the end off of one end and put it into the amp. It did make a very quite hissing noise when I did that. The output from the head phone jacks on a 15watt guitar amp did not work either. Does the amp need to be close to 65 watts in order to work?

[Cal Weldon]

No, as Richie said any amp will work. Do you have a multi-tester? If so, check the continuity or DC resistance of the speaker circuit. It should be between 3 and 15 ohms.

That resistor thingie on the tweeter is called a capacitor. It protects the tweeter from low frequencies.

If you had a slight hiss, it sounds like the speaker may be OK and that no sound is getting to them from the amp?

[DeadSpeaker]

Thanks for the response. My crappy "multimeter" does not give any read whatsoever on the speaker. It is probably the worst meter ever. Dad swears by it for some reason. The thing reads a 1.5 volt battery as over 10 volts. What should I do (that doesn't involve a new meter)

[richie00boy]

Why did you turn the amp all the way up? That's a good way to break something if it's not already broken.

[AndrewT]

Hi,
you can buy a cheap but good performing digital multimeter (DMM) for under $10.
Go and invest in a tool.

[DeadSpeaker]

Well I'm saving up (selling all my crap) to get a decent power amp. This will be used for bass guitar, electric guitar, and vocals. I'm shooting for the 50 to 100 watt range as I think this will be loud enough. I'm waiting for a book that I ordered form the library to arrive that is on the subject of building speaker systems, but I couldn't resist asking another question. What impedance should I look for in buying the amp? If the speakers that I have don't match it, I will buy 10 inch ones that do match the amp(I want to use the same cab as the amp will use up most of my funds). What is the most common impedance for guitar playing? Sorry if this question is dumb or out of place. I 'm not quite sure about this stuff yet.

[AndrewT]

Hi,
buy 8ohm drivers.
If you use a pair in the cabinet, you can either run them in parallel or use an amp to drive each.
Your power amp must be capable of driving a 4ohm reactive load, which is much worse than driving a 2ohm resistor.
Be careful if the spec just shows power into 4r0. That alone does not guarantee suitability for 4ohm speakers (8//8).

[DeadSpeaker]

So the best thing would be to run each speaker at 8 ohms on a different channel? The old ones in the case right now are parallel with a tweeter parallel also.