My new DCC system will be arriving in the next few days. I have a Soundtraxx LC decoder I bought quite sometime ago and a small oval speaker with an enclosure from Tony’s. I’m putting it in an Athearn CF7. No problem at all until it comes to the capacitor and the speaker. On the Soundtraxx diagram it shows the positive and negative position of the capacitor leads. How do I know which lead is positive or negative. Same goes for the speaker. It has an outer horseshoe shaped strip to solder a wire to and straight tab in the center. Which is positive or negative? Neither is marked as if it doesn’t matter or I’m supposed to already know about these things. Thanks. Bruce
i’m sure someone will correct me if i’m wrong [}:)] but i think the polarity of the speaker only matters if you have more than one , in which case you’d want to connect all the outer strips together and all the inner tabs together or you’d have the speakers vibrating in opposite directions (out of phase) and the sound would cancel itself out (not completely , but volume would be reduced)
As was mentioned you only have to worry about speaker polarity when using more than one speaker. You also don’t have to worry about cap polarity for the speaker in this installation. The cap you refer to is either a 33 or 47 uf cap and it is not polarized. You can wire it up to either speaker lead. Doesn’t matter what cap lead goes to speaker. Terry
Thanks guys. That clears up the issue. Bruce