Torn tinsel lead wire on brahma mk IV

[6three6mafia6 10+ year member]

I have a brahma mk IV that has been making a rattling noise when it would reach high excursion. Ive had the sub like this for almost a year but i took it out like 2 months ago after i posted this problem at soundillusions and they told me it could be tinsel lead slap. Well yesterday i took it out and the box and 1 of the tinsel leads was TORN . It is torn like 1/8th from were the terminal is soldered to the tinsel lead so you could say it snaped from the terminal basicly. My question is what should i do? is this something i could do? speaker shop? and my other question is , my sub is a dual 4 ohm and i would wire it parallel to achive a 2 ohm load from my amp, if the tinsel lead wire has snaped from one of voice coils(theres a pair dvc) is that supposed to affect a sub when it only runs on one of the voice coils?

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[6three6mafia6 10+ year member]

oh and what the hell happened to soundillusions.net?

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

You dont own a camera?

 

[6three6mafia6 10+ year member]

So as you can see it snapped right at the terminal. What does this mean ? its been like this for almost a year playing on set of coils. How can this be fixed? will it be the same driver? play the same? And were is soundilluions.net?

 

[IgnoreMe 5,000+ posts]

yea you can pick some up from scott at fi.
i will warn you though, as i just did it today...

if you are going to completely replace all the tinsels (meaning going under the dust cap)

1) be VERY careful removing the CA glue coving the solder joint. you can easily cut through, or bend the coil wire enough so that it snaps where it connects to the coil assembly

2) do not desolder the connection but rather, just cut off the tinsel leaving about 1 or 2 mm. solder the new tinsel to that point. if you desolder the joint and seperate the coil wire from the tinsel you will see that the coil wire is all coated still and the solder will be a major PITA to get to stick to it

3) dont get anything in the gap

i ****ing hacked up my BTL pretty bad as this was my first time doing it. i WAS going to make a tutorial, but it just went to hell, so i gave up. i got it working and ****, but i had some major issues like breaking the coil wire. i had to pull some up off the coil assembly to solder the tinsel to, and then for some reason my coils were reading fine. then once i had the dustcap glued on, and tinsels soldered to the terminals, i was getting .7 at 1 terminal (which is normal for fi's 1 ohm coils) and 1.4 at the other. so i had to remove it and **** around some more.

lesson mother ****ing learnt. id ALMOST rather buy a recone.

heres a nice link. i believe the 18" xxx are a boob cone too, so thats a plus in this situation.

http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8208&hl=tinsel%20lead&st=0

also here is a link to a repair for a XXX. you can do it,and the sub will play just fine. i suggest doing it this way, versus removing the dust cap, and all that bs. just too much to go wrong under their on already weaked parts.

http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=198896&highlight=tinsel+popped

 

[silvercookie 5,000+ posts]

did you ever consider just soldering it????

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

There is a right way, and a wrong way, to do a repair solder job on broken tinsel leads. To do it right, the old one is cut off, and the new one is soldered back on ON EACH END. Where a soldering the wire back together at the center will leave a hard, non-flexible point in the tinsel lead at its most crucially flexible point.

 

[silvercookie 5,000+ posts]

i see your point lol

but what is tinsel lead wire is it just more flexible than wire with the plastic crap around it or is it made specifically for speakers?

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

i see your point lol
but what is tinsel lead wire is it just more flexible than wire with the plastic crap around it or is it made specifically for speakers?

Its a woven, non-jacketed wire. Not like standard stranded wire minus the jacket, but not made just for speakers either. Its not really even more flexible than standard wire (depending on strand count), but a solder joint becomes solid metal, no flex, zero. Hence you wouldn't want such a thing in the center of your tinsel lead "arch".
Cheers. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[silvercookie 5,000+ posts]

lol thanks for clearing that up

maybe you should bring it to a place to get it fixed lol

 

[IgnoreMe 5,000+ posts]

what audioholic is talking about is in the second link i provided. thats an accepted way.

or you can do it the other way i posted in my own quoted post. thats what i did, but i cant recommend it for a novice (which, to this repair, i sure as hell was lol). it replaces the whole tinsel in its entirety, but it is a royal PITA

 

[6three6mafia6 10+ year member]

I am not taking off the dustcap of doing anything like that, i will just ruin the speaker. Since my tinsel wire snapped near the terminal it would be ok to just soder it with a little extra piece of wire since its not in the middle right? also what type of wire should i use? speaker wire?

 

[Pyro_By_Nature 5,000+ posts]

Half ass it and it's just going to snap again.

Take off the dustcap and just have a do-over.It's REALLY not that hard, you guys act like its brain surgery.

 

[smd4life 5,000+ posts]

shoulda bought my sub instead

 

[BassAddictJ 5,000+ posts]

here's my tutorial that i wish was made into a sticky....but the admins dotn like me so this very helpful info isnt readily available unless you search for it (which god forbid anyone will ever do that lol)

http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=224888

do it right or itll break off again