speaker question

sorry, this isn't exactly wakeboarding, but, i'm hooking up several sets of speakers at my house, my problem is i had a friend hook up some of the speakers off of a 4 wire harness. i know he used the red/black together and the green/white together, however i think he may have used the green as a positive and white as negative. what would happen if i hooked the speakers up reverse polarity to my amp? i'd greatly appreciate help before i start taking speakers down. thanx.

The colors don't really matter and there isn't any polarity issue per se regarding speakers and amps, what counts is making sure the speakers are in phase. If your speakers are out of phase, then the wave crest of one speaker coincides with the trough of the other and the sound tends to cancel out - the same principle is used in those Bose sound-cancellation headphones they advertise on TV.

That having been said, the easiest way to make sure everything is in phase is to run positive to positive and negative to negative for each channel. However, if you ran positive on the amp to negative on the speaker and vice versa for BOTH channels, you would still be in phase and everything would be OK soundwise, just a little confusing schematic-wise.

The short answer is to check the connections on the speakers (color and polarity), write it all down, and duplicate the connections on the amp.

thanx arnie, i called friend the next day, he told me how he wired them and everything sounds great

Hook em up, listen, swap green/white on one speaker, listen, if leave it the way it sounds best. It does matter which way they are wired as long as both speakers are hooked up the same way.

It's real easy to tell if a speaker is wired out of phase. Especially, if the wire colors are confusing.

Take the speaker leads lose at the amp and connect them to the + and - sides of a 9 volt battery. If the speaker cone moves out then the speaker wire that you have attached to the positive terminal on the battery is the positive side. If the cone moves in then you have the wires swapped.

The 9 volt will not hurt the speaker but is strong enough for you to see the cone move.