What could be the problem? Left front speaker...

I have a pretty basic empeg install. Empeg Mark 2a connected to a 4 channel amp in the trunk. In turn, the amp drives 4 speakers directly, and no sub. The two front speakers were bought at the time of the empeg install, while the 2 rear remain the stock ones that came with the car. Everything worked fine for about 5 months, but now I notice my left front speaker goes out from time to time. I haven't found any common cause, but when it happens, turning the empeg volume up about 10db will bring the speaker back to life, even if I then drop the volume to nothing right after.

Any suggestions on what to check first? Being that raising the volume brings it back, I don't believe it is a connection issue, but I have checked all the connections that are easy enough to get to.

Perhaps the extra voltage is enough to give the faulty connection enough of a jolt to start conducting again?

Stu

I had a similar problem with my right front speaker. Turning the gain control knob gently back and forth solved the problem. I believe it was a dirty contact on the gain control potentiometer. I ended up re-balancing my speaker levels lately, and it hasn't happened since.

Mechanical sticking in the speaker itself?

Are you in a position to swap connections at the amp output and try it for a while to see if the same speaker is affected, or the other one (in which case, suspect the parts - including wiring and connections - upstream of where you swapped). Apologies if it sounds awful with the stereo reversed.

Tweaking the gain nobs had no effect, problem still exists.

I'll try swapping the left to the right on the connections going into the amp first and see what happens, then put them back and try swapping the speakers to narrow it down to the speaker its self, or the amp. Depending on the weather, I should be able to get this done tomorrow.

Did you get anywhere with this? It's been a week, and I'm wondering whether no news is good news - ?

I've been riding mo motorcycle almost everywhere these days, so I haven't been in my car enough to troubleshoot the problem. I'll let you know more when I do drive it

I have finally gotten a bit more troubleshooting done, and am now waiting on the problem to reappear. I first reversed my speakers, so that the right was running off the left connection, and vice versa. Problem appeared immediatly on the right speaker, elliminating the left speaker and its cabling from being the problem. I then reversed the RCA connections going into the amp, and the problem has yet to resurface.

Iffy RCA connector/wire? Could be the RCA connector on the amp as well...

Have you tried wiggling the wires where they enter the connectors?

/Michael

Got in the car this morning to go to work, and both front speakers now have the problem, and it was cutting in and out quite a bit. Going to retighten all the speaker connections and see what happens. For now, it looks like two channels on my amp are going out though :-(

Iffy RCA connector/wire? Could be the RCA connector on the amp as well...

I had this problem after my install. I had to resolder the RCA connectors on the amp. That immediately solved the problem.

Just bumping this back up. It's pretty much confirmed to be a problem inside the amplifier, as no matter how I adjust the inbound and outbound connections, the problem stays on a particular output channel (normally the right front). The problem affecting 2 channels at once seems to be gone. For now, the problamatic channel is routed to one of the stock speakers in the rear, so my upgraded speakers in the front sound ok.

Still need to swap around some input connections to get my fader controls working properly again. But for now, looks like the amp needs to be replaced. Now that I can afford a better one, I'll probably get one that can do my new speakers justice.