Non marked tower speaker wire...what could happen?

[gride]

Going to mount that wet box today on a friends boat. I can hook the speaker wire up to the amp fine, but ski club of Montgomery(closed) used some horrid brown wire that is not marked neg. Or pos. What happens if the neg. Wire goes into the pos. Slot of the terminal cup and pos. Into negative slot? Yes I'm rewiring it with 4 conductor 16 gauge next week, but was curious about my current situation. Have a great weekend. AMERICA

[EarmarkMarine]

Search for a fine lip on one side of the wire as there should be a distinquishing mark of some type.
If you mistakenly reverse the electrical polarity to the speakers and one speaker is different from the other then you will get phase cancellations that will be increasingly pronounced as the frequency lowers. Verify polarity, whether the speaker is moving in or out, with a small 1.5 volt battery. Or, use an external jumper wire to check continuity and mark the wiring accordingly. You can do an acoustic check by balancing from extreme left or right to the middle. 'In-phase' will get slightly louder in the middle and 'out-of-phase' will lose midbass or warmth in the middle as compared to a single speaker. 'In-phase' will have both tower speakers sounding as one while 'out-of-phase' will sound more like two distinct separate sources. You can also check polarity (which is the electrical factor) and phasing (which is the acoustical factor and can be more frequency and distance dependent) by fading between the tower and in-boat speakers, without the subwoofer being operational and with your ears half way between the tower and in-boat speakers. Sometimes this can reveal an issue that you didn't know you had otherwise.


David
Earmark Marine