I have a pair of AC Euro Audio Concepts Speakers, I don't know the wattage but the bloke I bought them off says they are around 700watts. They sounded good so I bought them. The speakers were second hand, as part of a complete disco package, so I cannot return them.
I noticed a lack of trebble coming from one of the cabs, which meant it was a lot quieter than the other one.
One of the component speakers has blown / is broken on one of the cabs, I think its called the horn, but I'll illustrate which one just to make sure!



How much is this likely to cost to repair/replace?
Would it be easy to do myself or would I need someone else to do it?

Thanks!!

James

My 4d worth - When purchasing second-hand gear like speakers, there is a highly-likely possibility the speakers have been thrashed.

If you could give some indication of 'make' of the speakers or the 'horn', then I'm sure Chris could give you a 'breakdown' of what you could get, but I will also say in the same breath - don't play with what you don't understand, or it may cost you a bit of lolly!!!

Merry Christmas

Okay first of all you need to establish whether it is the horn or another component which has failed before opening your wallet for some expensive surgery.

Some Cabs, have a little printed circuit board inside them, usually mounted just behind the Input connector plate or inside the cab. This is called a crossover, and filters out the bass frequencies before sending them to the horn.

It is possible that there is a burned out component on there, some crossovers have either a fuse or bulb to protect the horn from being overloaded, so there is a (small) possibility that it may be a fault on the crossover or blown fuse / lamp which is preventing the horn from working in which case buying a new horn wouldn't solve the problem. If a component has burned out on the Crossover then your nose will probably tell you as soon as you open the cab , look for signs of components in distress and scortch marks on the Printed Circuit!

If there is no Crossover in the cabinet or on the rear connector plate then there may be a jumble of components soldered onto the connector tags on the back of the horn, this is a cheap 'n' cheerful way of filtering out the bass frequencies, if this is found to be the case then it is usually likely that your horn is knackered and will need replacing. This could cost anywhere between £15 - £200 depending on what type it is, the rating and the manufacturer.

To be honest if you are not tecnically minded or don't own a soldering iron then you will need to bite the bullet and take it to a dealer for repair, but it won't be cheap. You can tackle this job yourself, but you need to ensure that any component is replaced with the correct type, and that a replacement horn is a correct match for the broken one, if its wrong then you risk further damage and possibly shorting out your Amp as well.

Buying 2nd hand speakers is a minefield and not recommended if you are not familiar with how they operate and how to check them. Some speakers may look okay from the outside, but are the equivalent of buying a Nissan Sunny with 200,000 miles which has been a taxi

Points taken, I'll consider my wrists slapped!
I'll take it to a local dealer. All I know about the speakers
are that they are made by AC Euro Audio Concepts. There is
nothing else on them to give me clues as to what rating they are.
I dont have a soldering iron and am not very technically minded
so I'll leave this one to the professionals. Looks like even more
money to be spent
Things arent that bad though, I had my first gig last night with the
gear which went great, got myself another booking from that and a promise
that I would be used for future functions!

I am familiar with these speaker cabs having had several in for repair. I don't know the exact rating of them but would guess at around 200 watts RMS.

The tweeters (piezo) are connected using spade terminals so the cabels can just fall off. Remove one of the side carrying handles and check that the wires are secure. The small xover PCB attached to the back of the cab can give trouble with dry joints mainly because the components on it are not effectively secured with cable ties or hot melt. Finally the tweeter itself can blow however this is the least likely of the 3 but swapping the 2 horns over will confirm this.

Hope this helps.

PaulS

Thanks 5Star I'll take a look and see!

before I upgraded my JBL speakers I used to have a pair of JBL TR125. Great speakers, pretty sensitive and loud, but I too had problems with the compression horn wiring. I found that the spade conecter to the compression horn came off. So I decided to solder all spade connections to tags on both speakers to prevent any more trouble.