Replacement tweeters (speaker) crossover query.

[owen_h]

I'm currently changing and upgrading the front speakers in my T5.1 Beach (one of the original door speakers gave up the ghost). Both the door ones have now been swapped fine so moved onto the tweeters which are located behind grills on the dashboard. The kit I bought isn't quite as plug and play as I thought in this area and Im going to have to make up a new plate to hold the tweeters and also fit in separate crossover circuitry. Bit of hassle but have come up with a plan and ordered the bits I need including 2 plugs so I can utilise all the original wiring.
Existing VW plug has 2 wires: A Black and Black with red stripe. I'm assuming the black = negative and Black with red stripe is positive ?
Tracing the black wire it goes through a capacitor and then to the tweeter.
Black with red stripe goes direct to the tweeter.
i.e the crossover appears to be on the -ve side

With the new (Blau) setup I have red and black cables going via a separate crossover box and then to the tweeters. I dismantled the crossover box and inside is a very similar setup to VW : one wire via a capacitor and the other straight through. But in this case the capacitor is on the +ve (red) side .

So my question /dilemma when I come to wire up the the plug is do I wire it so as the capacitor is on the black or black/red stripe 'path'
Black = maintain VW path (which I believe to be -ve)
Black/red stripe = capacitor on what I believe to be the +ve path (as the Blau instructions indicate)

Or maybe it doesn't matter which side the capacitor sits?
Anyone knowledgeable in this area or has done similar .

Owen

 

[Keith Smith]

The capacitor is there to act as a simple high pass filter and protect the tweeter from being overpowered. One leg of the speaker connection is normally “earth” and the capacitor is fitted in the other leg. If this were a hi-fi then it would be important to get both channels wired up identically to prevent phase anomalies but I doubt you would notice any difference in the confines of a vehicle.

If you have a multimeter, with the power off the radio, you can check which leg of the speaker wires has a zero ohms reading to the chassis of the radio and this will definitively confirm the polarity of the wiring.

 

[owen_h]

Many thanks for the advice. I do have a multimeter so will check as suggested.