Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

[triplefour]

A DJ friend of mine bought this subwoofer not that long ago:
https://www.amazon.com/Seismic-Audio.../dp/B00CPSR13E

and at some point, sound just stopped coming out of the speaker. the unit powers up and all the lights come on.

basically all the guts of the thing are on one plate that has the boards on one side and the inputs, switches and lights on the other.
he heard i can fix things, so he took out the guts and handed it off to me. the speaker and box are just too much to deal with.

ive only ever fixed tv's and its mostly been easy stuff. i have no idea about audio equipment. but i do have all the tools, and patience.

my first noob question is this: what speaker can i hook up to the now disconnected leads to troubleshoot this thing? does it have to be the same size, or ohms as the original speaker, or can i just use any old speaker to test with?

next step i guess, would be to find the service manual or schematic, which i did search for but havent found...

in the picture you can see the black and white wires going off the screen to the right. those are the speaker output wires. labeled OUT+ and GND

[madan1]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

You can use any speaker/driver rated 4+ ohms, but keep the volume low.
Check first the relay next to where the speakers cables are soldered - bad solder joints, does it operate when the unit is turned on, etc..
Also some better pics on both sides of the pcbs will be rally useful;

[triplefour]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

well so it turned out, i plugged in an 8ohm speaker i had lying around and it all just worked. so he brought his original speaker and tried to hook it up and sure enough, nothing at all. how could his speaker have fried like that? it doesnt look damaged in any way...

[Khron]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

How, you ask? Well, an active 15" PA subwoofer for under 300$ - there's your answer.

Read: cheap stuff.

If you also consider that the retailer, manufacturer, and however many other middle-men need to make some profit out of that, you're left with... what, 50$, maaaaaaybe 100$(?) worth of materials employed. Out of that, there's the electronics and the enclosure itself, so the speaker itself is (optimistically) 30-40$ perhaps? And there's only so much wire you can fit into that sort of cost envelope. That won't even get you a decent-brand affordable-range 1" compression driver...

[stj]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

a good 15" bass driver cost over $100 last time i got any - and that was over 20 years ago!
speakers arent cheap!

[triplefour]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

yeah that makes sense. it is pretty cheap. so what if he gets a "expensive" replacement speaker? will the cheap guts still make it suck, or is it worth it?

[budm]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

15" woofer:
https://www.parts-express.com/Search...itesearch=true

[madan1]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

Well... you can send the driver for repair.
You can also buy a new cheap driver.. I do not see any point in buying an expensive driver for this particular amp.
The boxes/cabinets are made for specific driver in mind ( usually ), so a new driver ( cheap or expensive ) might sound worse than the old one.
A good thing to start with will be to calculate the inner volume of the box and then search the net which driver will sound good in that volume.

[Khron]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

... And with whatever port cross-section & length the box already has.

[Khron]

Re: Seismic Audio Baby Tremor PW (15" powered SUBWOOFER) lights up but no sound

Case in point: https://youtu.be/jXxO09JE6YY?t=32