Diagnosing Speaker Cab Problem

[snipelfritz]

So, about a month or two ago, I bought a used 1x15 Crate Bass speaker to run my Yamaha 100w(G100II I believe) solid state guitar amp head through in tandem to my regular amp. For the first few weeks, it was great. Suddenly, I realized there isn't any sound coming out of it. I do some troubleshooting and figure it's not the head nor the cable(it works just fine through my other speaker).

Being lazy and depressed, I've just been playing without it, but now I want to figure out what the issue is. Like I said, it's a bass amp, rated 4ohms and (I think) 240w RMS while the amp is only 100w. I'm not sure if it's just a loose connection or if it's the speaker itself. I highly doubt I blew out the speaker considering I'm just running a guitar through it, and I doubt the speaker would just cut out like that if that were the case.

I took a look at the inputs(there are two). There's a black wire coming off of one of them. The other two are connected by the other end and there's a red wire coming out of that same point.

Some of these details might be off, I'll double check when I'm at home(just really bored at work so I'm posting this). I'm just hoping you guys can point me in the right direction as to figuring out what the issue is considering 99.99%-100% of ILF knows more about this kind of thing than me. I hope it's nothing more than a quick solder job, but any general advice would be great!

[snipelfritz]

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuumpppppppplllllllllleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase halp.

Any information about Crate cabs would be amazing and useful. Like, the proper way to get inside of it for one.

[J.Miller]

I'd be pretty surprised if the speaker just stopped working completely. You probably just have a broken connection. You can find a wiring diagram real quick online. should be really straight-forward for just one speaker.

[grindonomicon]

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuumpppppppplllllllllleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase halp.

Any information about Crate cabs would be amazing and useful. Like, the proper way to get inside of it for one.

Usually you can just remove the back panel, but after you take the screws out, you'll need a putty knife or butter knife to pry the back of the cab out - they're made to fit very tighty. Otherwise you might have to take front grill/ front loaded speaker out to get in. If I knew the model # I could offer better advice, but you should be able to figure it out by looking at it. Look at the speaker - if you can see the mounting ring, it's front loaded. If the speaker is mounted behind the baffle, it's back-loaded. You need to get in the way the speaker is loaded.

After you're in the cab, if it's wiring, you should notice it right off. If one of the solder connections breaks, or if it's tabbed, one of the tabs can pop/get shaken off the speaker lead, you won't get any sound. You can reconnect the tab and crimp it with a pliers, or you can just solder or re-solder the connections.

There's only two wires to solder a speaker to a jack in a simple one speaker cab, and a couple jumpers if there's two jacks and it's wired to parallel with another cabinet...

[dubkitty]

i'd bet that it's more likely that the connection at the speaker is loose rather than at the jack.

[McSpunckle]

i'd bet that it's more likely that the connection at the speaker is loose rather than at the jack.

That'd be my bet too.

If you take the back off, a loose wire will be obvious. If you look at the connections to the speaker, in all likelihood (based on the few speakers I've looked in) it uses crimp terminals. Just use some pliers or something to crimp them back down. Or you can solder them on, if you want something more permanent.