Repairing a speaker cabinet by replacing a home theater speaker

When it comes to great audio sound, there’s no part of a home theater that gets overlooked more than the speaker cabinet. It is the last link in the sound chain and controls the final way you hear everything. The speaker cabinet reproduces tone as sound waves in the air, creating subtle differences in sound. What happens when you have a burned out speaker in one of your cabinets? Do you fix it or just buy a new one?

The answer to this question is usually a resounding yes, simply because those cabinets were built with your speakers in mind. That’s what they designed for. Think of the amount of math and engineering that went into building the cabinets with a certain amount of air space in mind. These cabinets were tuned specifically for those old speakers. Installing other speakers there won’t sound the same as your old speakers.

Here is a simple step-by-step process on how you can remove the faulty speaker from the cabinet and have it repaired.

• Take the speaker cabinet you will be working on and lay it on its back to remove the speaker grill. Some grids are different than others. Some simply snap into place, while others are secured with screws visible from the side or front of the cabinet.
• Now that you’ve removed the grille, you’ll next unscrew the first screw on the faulty speaker, and then the screw opposite the first. All screws must be removed in an order of opposite pairs.
• Now carefully pull the speaker out of the cabinet. It will still be connected by cables to the other speakers and the main unit. Some are linked by two cables, while others by four. There should never come a time when you remove a speaker and only one cable remains. If you see this to be the case then you may be in luck and the speaker is simply unplugged and not blown.
• Now take those cables hanging from the back and pull them out of the speaker tabs using the plastic connectors. Never pull on the cable itself. You will end up damaging it. Those tabs should be color coded to help you distinguish between the positive (red) and negative (black) wires. If they aren’t, simply label them with a marker before removing. Be careful not to let the cables fall back into the cabinet once you remove them by taping them down the sides.
• Recheck that the removed speaker is fused and dead by determining the resistance between the two positive and negative connection tabs. If you get a meter reading of less than one ohm or more than twice the impedance rating, you have a bad speaker. If you get a reading between the two good zones, then there should be no problem with the speaker. Another way is to lightly press the center of the speaker cone. The speaker is burned out if it makes a screeching sound or does not return to its original shape.
• Now that you have your new speaker ready to go, you will need to reconnect the cables by pushing the connectors into the corresponding tab. Place the speaker in the mounting hole and replace the screws in the same opposite pair way as used previously.
• Lastly, you’ll tighten all those screws, replace the grille, and return the speaker cabinet to its upright position.