Undead Kenwood Subwoofer

[Lazarus Short]

If you remember my post about the moving sale and all the colored/picture vinyl I bought, you might remember that I scored a powered sub for five bucks. I figured it was probably dead, and this evening I was able to test it, and it WAS dead. I took off the plate amp from the back, to find a plastic baffle under it - cut the leads to the driver, tested (8 ohms), so it's not completely dead. I put the amp section aside, noting that nothing was obviously blown, and the two internal fuses were OK. The good news is that I have a NHT subwoofer amp, so I'm going to connect that directly to the driver, and it should work. Some damping should probably be slathered on the plastic baffle.

While I was at it I took the JBL's out of the shop system and put in the B&W DM302's. I really prefer the soft-dome tweeters of the B&W's to the titanium tweets of the JBL's. I think I will avoid titanium tweets in the future...

 

[laatsch55]

A little harsh eh??

 

[Lazarus Short]

Ya, a little harsh. I wish I had my old L-15's - they were sweet (and modded). Or were they L-19's? Too many years ago...

 

[R1200S]

I had a set of JBL L166's back in the 70's. I think these were the first titanium tweeters JBL came out with. I'm with you.... never did care for those metal dome tweeters and steered clear since then. Just sounded too harsh for my liking. This was when I had 20 year old ears! I'd probably love them now that I can't hear for shit.

http://audio-database.com/JBL/speaker/l166-e.html

 

[Lazarus Short]

Well, the woofer is fine, but the NHT subwoofer amp is defective: noise, noise, noise.

 

[R1200S]

Depending upon the model, you can likely find a schematic on the NHT site.

http://www.nhthifi.com/pages/downloads

I'm pretty sure they have techs that will repair that sub amp if you want. Probably not worth it unless it's the SA3 big dog.

 

[Lazarus Short]

News! Or is that "gnus"? Anyway, I connected the subwoofer-out of the Yamaha receiver to one of the Marantz 16 subunits, and connected the Marantz to the Kenwood sub. It works, and for fifteen bucks!

 

[laatsch55]

Serendipitous!!!!

 

[Fishoz]

Lookee dat.....Laz always brings out the literary best in all of us!!

 

[laatsch55]

Of course he does, he's a class act!!!

 

[Lazarus Short]

Thanks, Lee! I have been in the shop, listening to bass-heavy tracks, and have tweaked the bass at the receiver by +6 dB. The sub is just a bit one-notey, so I'm glad I didn't buy it new.

 

[laatsch55]

It's still cool to play with though ain't it?? And on the cheap...

 

[Lazarus Short]

I tried to finish up the Acoustat subwoofer repair, broke a driver (I swear - it jumped off the bench) and relegated it to single channel use in my shop system. That left one crossover, so I strapped it to the back of the Kenwood. It works, but I need a suitable amp. Later on that.

 

[Northwinds]

I had a couple good plate amps, I think I tossed them or I would give you one Laz. I think I still have a Kenwood driver also somewhere. The Kenwood's amp just made horrible loud noises when I hooked it up. I talked myself out of buying a pair of big Yamaha 15" subs, not enough amps to run all that shit but it would have been fun

 

[Lazarus Short]

Hey, thank you, Ron!