How do I test my crossover?

[mefff]

About a week ago I cranked up Dire Straits - Money for nothin' and cooked something in my one crossover in my Totem Mite Speakers. The volume is still audible but I get a distinct crackling and less volume in the one side at higher levels. How do I go about testing the cross over components to change the required cooked part. I can obviously compare to the one that isnt cooked and I have 3 different mutimeters...... although they all do the same job pretty much. Thanks for any replies in Advance.

[Salas]

You need an LCR bridge to check microfarads or milihenries. Multimeters are for resistors, but many have capacitor metering terminals too.
But I have a hunch that you have a swollen voice coil. Checked your drivers?

[v-bro]

Have you swapped the left and right filter boards?

[mefff]

If swollen means... cooked or frozen.... You are correct. The voice coil does not move freely on the woofer.... thus a cooked woofer and the xo is OK. Thanks for the 2 replies.... mefff

[v-bro]

What amplifier do you use? Cooked voice coils mostly are due to driving an amp into clipping, this occurs quicker with a too light amp.

If your goal is to play at high volume levels maybe it's better to go for more watts (from your amp...)

The heavier amp will most of all demand more of the mechanical properties of the speaker, this very audible distortion saves your speakers because you "hear" that you're going to far.

A too light amp will only create more heat in the voice coil and burn it before you hear it.

[mefff]

Its a circa 1982 Yamaha 45 watt channel using 99.999 pure silver wire...... The sound was awesome..... unbelievable to be honest. The ticket here is sometimes drinking 15 beer costs more than the beer.........

[FastEddy]

" 45 watt channel using 99.999 pure silver wire...... The sound was awesome..... unbelievable to be honest. ..."

Sure like to know what exactly you did to the amp to make it "awesome". Just rewiring w/silver wire? ... change any caps? ... resistors?

And which wires? output leads? interconnects 'tween pre-amp & amp? ... etc.?

Generalized tips can be valuable to us mortals.

[v-bro]

Driving it to clip will probably not sound awesome at all.
This seems more like an amp for soft music at normal listening levels, if you wanna rock go for at least 100W RMS per channel.
Or use extreme high efficiency speakers (95db at least) and stay below 3/4 of the volume scale.

[psych&sound]

You were driving little speakers with a clipping amp, in an application for which these little speakers are not suited (nor any Totem 2-way.) Some common sense - a 5" woofer can't play full range loudly! If they could, then there would be no 15" eviction party speakers or subwoofers. Attempting this often results in a heat damaged voicecoil. Rarely would you damage a crossover with beer fueled abuse. (sounds like FUBAR - a movie made on the Canadian prairie with much beer or an electronic expense.)
Lucky for you a replacement driver is not too expensive.