How can i use my car speakers and put a plug on them to use on my home reciever?

Question

I know i want to put a plug on them... but how exactly do i do that?

Answer 1

For OPEN car speakers which are designed to be mounted into a door (you can see the back of the speaker cone):

Some car speakers have little metal tabs on them that are about 1/4 inch wide and about 3/8 to 1/2 inch long with bevelled edges. These are called "FASTON TABS".

If you are lucky, your speakers will have this! Then all you have to do is go to Radio Shack (in the USA) or "The SOURCE" (in Canada) with one of the speakers and find the mating FASTON connector. Once you find the right connector, you can solder some speaker wire to the FASTON, and conntect it to the speaker, then connect the loose end to your receiver. Be very careful pushing on the FASTON connectors. When new they are very "stiff" and sometimes very hard to push on. If you slip, you could damage the speaker.

If you are NOT so lucky, then your speaker will likely have a solder terminal strip mounted right on the speaker. If that is the case, then you will have to solder the wire directly to the solder tab on the speaker. BEWARE: If you have to do this, then only heat the solder strip as much as required! DO NOT subject the strip to prolinged heat! The wire that comes out of the speakers voice coil is often also soldered to this solder strip! The voice coil wire is very fragile compared with regular wire! If you overheat it, you could ruin the connection and make the speaker go dead or worse - intermittent!

For CLOSED car speakers which are designed to be mounted in the rear window (the speakers are in a self contained case):

For this style of speaker, there should just be connection terminals, and you just hook up the wire between the speakers and your stereo like you would for bookshelf speakers.

No matter what speaker type you have, be sure to hook the + and - up to the receiver correctly! If you reverse the connections on one of the speakers, then your stereo will sound really bad! This is because the speakers are out of phase. If it sounds bad, try reversring the + and - connections on ONE of the speakers and see if it sounds better.

Having said that, please bear in mind that the OPEN speaker style are NOT going to sound that great. This is because speakers are meant to be used in an enclosure! Home speakers come with the enclosure when you buy them. But Car speakers often rely of the door or the trunk to form a make-shift enclosure. Car speakers are designed accordingly so that they will sound good when mounted in the car. If you just put your car speakers on the shelf and connect them, they WILL work, but likely wont sound so great.

Many years ago, there were a couple of Professional Engineers which were also Audio Hackers! Neville Thiele and Richard Small looked into the acoustical-mechanical characteristics of loudspeakers, and thus was born the Thiele-Small Parameters. These parameters are the benchmark which is now used in the design of ALL modern loadspeaker systems.

If you want your car speakers to sound good, you should design and build an enclosure for them!

Here is some general information:

http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/thiele.asp

Understanding Thiele-Small Parameters:

http://www.electronixwarehouse.com/education/speakers/theil-small.htm

Once you understand the Theile-Small Parameters, you can begin to approach the design of the speaker enclosure. I will leave that to you - remember... Google is your friend! As is the local Public Library, or your local University Engineering Library which - no doubt - will have books on Loudspeaker Design!

Good Luck!

Answer 2

examine the label of all plugged in kit for skill rankings. upload them up. Multiply that answer by technique of one million.25. Get a skill inverter it truly is a minimum of that prime in score. you'll hit upon that you won't be able to apply the accent jack because it truly is 15 amps * 12 Volts or one hundred eighty watts. it could be 20 amps for 240 Watts. Be VERY careful in case you attempt to apply your motor vehicle battery as you mustn't be able to commence the motor vehicle. extra ideal yet, run it off a Marine Deep Discharge battery or 3. those are designed to be able to run down without hurting the fee. fee them up again with a wide-spread motor vehicle battery charger. you'll get inverters that use Alligator clips to batteries truly than an adjunct jack.

Answer 3

First off, car speakers are usually 4 ohms whereas house speakers are 8 ohm, so you run the risk of overdriving the house amp.

Answer 4

I think you answered your own question!