Determining Speaker Polarity: (finding the positive terminal)

I just bought a new pair of speakers but the terminals are not marked positive or negative, how do I figure out which terminal is which??
Well, there are two techguys how to methods!!

Method #1

Most speaker terminals will have one terminal smaller than the other. The smaller terminal is most often the negative terminal (as seen below). If you are still hesitant and MUST be sure, consult method #2.

Method #2

To be absolutely sure of which terminal is positive and which is negative, we will use a 1.5 v battery to have the speaker react as though it is playing music.

* special note * do not use any more than 1.5 v as it may damage the speaker coil

As we know, batteries are marked positive, negative, or both ... we will use this to our advantage when hooking up the battery to our speaker.

To start the process, temporarily attach a short piece of wire to each terminal of the speaker (be sure to either use wire that is marked, or wire of differing colours to help determine which terminal is which).
In our example, we used standard speaker wire which is "polarized" (one wire is made of copper and the other is made from tin .. interestingly, this serves no electrical purpose)

Once you have connected the wire to your speaker, proceed to briefly touch the free ends of the wire to the battery terminals (as shown below). In some cases, extended contact with the battery has caused cancer of the voice coil (ie. blown speaker)

If the speaker moves OUT when the battery is first connected, the battery is connected in proper alignment. Be sure to take note of which wire is connected to the positive terminal of the battery as this is your speaker's positive terminal.

Still confused? Email us here

 

If you feel that this article has been of any use to you, please consider supporting the website by making a small donation. For more info, simply click on the "Make a Donation" icon and you will be brought to a donation info page.  Thanks!