Resistors between amp and speaker output

[nautiques4life]

SANTE 2005 stock team stereo 6 speakers, sub and 4 tower speakers straight from nautiques.

That being said, 2 speakers, the driver side under dash and back, stopped working, checked all wiring; wiring and speakers were good but not getting a signal. Come to find that between the amp and the speaker output there are 2 small ceramic looking resistors and the one that goes to the right side's speakers looks a little burnt. So I pull it and go get another resistor but couldn't find the right one, only had a bigger one, installed it, and got nothing. So I decided to just take it out of the system completely, hooked it all back up without and it worked great.

Question is am i risking causing any real problems not having that resistor in the line or will i just blow a fuse on the amp instead? Any insight greatly appreciated, and sorry for the long winded explanation/story.

[SkiTundra]

RE: Resistors between amp and speaker output

What value was the resistor? If it was for impedance matching you could blow your amp. Consumer amps don't generally like seeing things like 2 ohm loads and I'm not sure I'd trust any overload protection to work fast enough.

[Andrew]

RE: Resistors between amp and speaker output

if you see any problems, it will likely be a blown transistor in the amp... they are a pretty easy fix, but it is much easier to not blow them....

[DWhitt]

RE: Resistors between amp and speaker output

If you have a meter, check the impedance(resistance) of the circuit you're talking about. Disconnect the 2 wires from the amp and measure there. If it's below 2 ohms, you will need to put a resistor back in series to raise the impedance. If you're at or above 2 ohms, I wouldn't worry too much. You should be able to find specs for your amp that tell the minimum impedance. Most are 2 ohms.

[EarmarkMarine]

From the factory, you should have two pair of cockpit coaxials run off two amplifier channels and the bow coaxials run off the source unit front channels. Perhaps the resistors were used in an attempt to run all six coaxials off the amplifier?

In any case, resistors are the wrong solution and should be removed all together.

You'll be measuring the DC resistance with a multimeter which is much different from the speaker's AC impedance. Two coaxials with a nominal impedance of 4-ohms each and wired in parallel may measure as low as 1.5 ohms.

Measure the speakers independently. Anything lower than a DCR of 3-ohms is probably an indication of a partially burnt voice coil. Since the tweeters are capacitor coupled they won't show up, so you'll have to measure them separately. Basically you're looking for consistent readings from all identical speakers.

David
Earmark Marine

[TravisFling]

Yeah, I tried the resistor/mini capacitor thing in my wild and crazy youth to run all six speakers from one amp, and it's not meant to do that. It craps it all up. Just yank them out and rerun the wires. You probably want to check the amp and see how many speakers are run to what channels and whatnot and then get it all back together correctly. You can post here and we can help you out.

[nautiques4life]

David, that is exactly how everything is set up (two pair of cockpit coaxials run off two amplifier channels and the bow coaxials run off the source unit front channels) except that 3 inches off the amp the two cockpit coaxials have resistors. Took a picture of one of them (the non-burned one) to give everyone a look at what it was running. So now the system is running the way I'd have designed it originally- without any resistors... unless someone here thinks that is a big "no-no"

Thanks to all for the help and insight.

(sorry for the bluriness- camera phone)

[Andrew]

as long as your amp is stable with the current setup, then i wouldn't give it a second thought! i would highly recommend checking the resistance though!

[TravisFling]

I would highly recommend pulling the resistors out and if I were a betting man (which I am) I would say someone thought that was a great idea to run all six speakers off of one amp. (it doesn't work, you're only increasing the OHM's for certain frequency ranges) which is why people put mini caps and resistors inline to cut bass frequency. I wouldn't leave those in there for fear of damage to an amp.