Initial Results after adding Tweeters

[kvb968]

Purchased a set of Hertz c26 tweeters off eBay to upgrade my KEF audio. I read everyone’s comments on properly wiring them into the system. I closely studied the photos of the drivers and the comments of others. I realize the photos in an earlier comment are from a British viewer, but the wiring for the combination midrange/tweeter is the same worldwide. It is clear from the photos, that on the midrange, there are 4 wires, and that the bottom two wires are the tweeter wires. Furthermore the right bottom wire is the positive connection. After looking carefully at this and the comments, the proper colored wires to tap for tweeter additions are as follows:
Driver Side:
+ Purple/Black
- Blue/White

Passenger Side:
+ Purple/White
- Blue/White

 

[silent cilantro]

@Chriscpm @crestima @netsinah @Ryan_929 @kvb968 @jp129

I've read this thread multiple times and I only get more and more confused lol. Hoping you guys can shine a light.

Here is what I gathered. This pertains to LHD cars and to tweeter wiring only. Not main speaker wiring.

As you can see there are several discrepancies. Has a consensus been reached of what the right cables to tap are in order to add tweeters to the existing tweeter circuit? Maybe in another thread I missed?

 

[netsinah]

Thanks for the comparison silent cilantro and trying to reconcile the different postings. I know my wire coloring is accurate, however I can't swear by the polarity. All I know is my tweeters work AOK as set-up. I tested each speaker, before finalizing the wiring connections and doing clean-up. Perhaps if there's an "electrician" or someone ++ good with automobile speakers, they can confirm that the polarity, if consistent, will work either way(?). I say this, since I expect the different polarity used by others likely worked too. I'll wait with interest, to see your other responses.

 

[crestima]

@Chriscpm @crestima @netsinah @Ryan_929 @kvb968 @jp129

I've read this thread multiple times and I only get more and more confused lol. Hoping you guys can shine a light.

Here is what I gathered. This pertains to LHD cars and to tweeter wiring only. Not main speaker wiring.

View attachment 71237

As you can see there are several discrepancies. Has a consensus been reached of what the right cables to tap are in order to add tweeters to the existing tweeter circuit? Maybe in another thread I missed?

When I installed my A-pilar tweeters, I recall testing "by ear" reversing the double set of wires on each side and honestly to my ears I couldn't tell a difference in sound quality or volume emitted from the new tweeters, nor did I detect any difference coming from all other OEM speakers. Having said this, if one want's to be absolutely certain of nailing the correct wire polarity, it's hard to argue with the effectiveness of @netsinah's old fashion, yet bullet proof, 9volt battery test method.

 

[silent cilantro]

We can also test polarity with a multimeter, I think the most important thing for others that come after us is to identify the proper wires to tap.

There is one more variation I missed in the spreadsheet above and it's what @Medic518 and @jp129 did:

I think they are correct based on these pictures from @KJWEmira

 

[jp129]

Spicy oregano and I spoke directly and I checked my wiring today. I realized I didn't update or post what I did after my initial question.

 

[NJemira85]

We can also test polarity with a multimeter, I think the most important thing for others that come after us is to identify the proper wires to tap.

There is one more variation I missed in the spreadsheet above and it's what @Medic518 and @jp129 did:

View attachment 71260

Based on these pictures from @KJWEmira I think they are correct.

View attachment 71261
View attachment 71262

Does this mean, if one taps tweeter wires, no additional crossover/filter is necessary?

That’s easy money

 

[silent cilantro]

correct!

 

[NJemira85]

correct!

Now to harvest a pair of matching kef tweeter out of the coaxial drivers
..

 

[silent cilantro]

The one thing I’m questioning is in the left speaker the alleged tweeter wires (blue/white and purple/dark purple) are in the bottom pins of the connector.

In the right speaker, the alleged tweeter wires (yellow/white and purple/green) are in the top pins of the connector.

You’d think they’d be the same on both connectors

 

[crestima]

The one thing I’m questioning is in the left speaker the alleged tweeter wires (blue/white and purple/dark purple) are in the bottom pins of the connector.

View attachment 71268


In the right speaker, the alleged tweeter wires (yellow/white and purple/green) are in the top pins of the connector.

View attachment 71269

You’d think they’d be the same on both connectors

Ha, ha, good eye and good catch. When it comes to Lotus though, they seem to dislike following conventional standards. At times, they're not even consistent with their own. Take the choice of wire colors for instance, generally in electronics red to indicates + and black - or, alternatively, solid color indicates + and a color with black stripe for - . What does Lotus do? well they just give you tuti-fruty colors and all of them with rainbow stripes.
The inconsistency in wire order on the pin harnesses may be just another tactic to confuse everyone. Admittedly however, some of this may come as a result of Lotus simply slapping suppliers' products "as is" to their cars (in this case, KEF) and not enforcing the application of their own Lotus standard, if indeed there is one. I really don't know...

 

[silent cilantro]

You’d think they’d be the same on both connectors

Ok yeah, I think we have one side correct (right/passenger) but not the other. So if cabled like this, the left/driver tweeter is getting the mids signals while the other gets highs.

Seems like tweeter wires are the top wires in the connector with the speaker facing down. I missed this from @KJWEmira:

Here are IMG_0678 and IMG_0679 measuring impedance on the main speakers (bottom cables)

This is IMG_0682 measuring impedance on the tweeter, top cables:

What colors are those? Solid yellow and solid purple? Is this then the final answer? It makes sense, same main color for both sides, solid on one side, striped on the other. Right? RIGHT?! lol

 

[jp129]

Yea the impedence test would appear to make what you state correct.

Audio signal is like CAN, it streams the spectrum of frequencies. To separate frequencies that may damage the type of speaker, it gets band passed for a particular speaker.

This is why either connection method would still allow the tweeter to work, but we don't exactly know how Lotus/KEF does their signal processing/band pass filtering.

Otherwise, I would postulate that the tweeter that I spliced into the mids would get damaged, but it hasn't and it doesn't sound different pass/driver. In my case, I'm not going to overthink it if it sounds right to me and hasn't blown up.

But we should take note to what you've brought up.

 

[silent cilantro]

Yeah I agree, OP tapped the mids and has been fine.

Heck it even seems that some tapped one polarity from the mids and the other from the highs and it STILL worked

This whole thing has mostly been to satisfy my OCD, thanks everyone for humoring me!

Now let me go look at the subwoofer thread

 

[kvb968]

Not to make this more complicated than it already is, the bottom wires with the 2.4 ohm reading from the photo above are definitely the tweeter wires. The top wires, 3.6 ohms are the midrange. You can hook up your tweeters to either the bottom wires or the top. I hooked mine to the bottom wires with no filters as the signal to the tweeters have already gone through a crossover. The midrange needs to get as much power as possible from the amp, so you don’t really want to add another tweeter in to that channel. It’s easier for each tweeter channel to drive another tweeter.

 

[silent cilantro]

oh so the other way around