How To Tell If a Speaker Is Blown Without Hooking It Up

Its a good technique to tell whether or not a speaker is blown on the spot without hooking it up to an amp. This will help you identify a blown speaker within seconds and save you purchasing a dead subwoofer from ebay. Some people use a multimeter to tell if a speaker is blown, however to make things even more simpler you can use a 9 volt battery. Basically, with this method you dont need any fancy tools or read out machines. You simply attach it to the terminals on the basket and if the cone moves upon connection, you can tell right away as one of the blown speaker symptoms. You can also test home, guitar and laptop speakers so you will find use for many other drivers.

Make your own homemade speaker tester you will need:

1X Cheap Battery Snap

1X New Good branded (Duracell) 9 Volt Square Shaped Battery)

1) Attach the 9 volt battery onto the snapon holder. It will click in place.

2) There will be two colored wires Black and Red. Unstrip about 1 CM of insulation off both wire. Twist the copper braids together to make firm connections.

3) In order to tell if a speaker is blown without hooking it up to an amp, simply temperately hold the connections onto the speaker terminals. Reconnect and attach continually, if you hear a short cracking noise that syncs with the wires and the cone moves upwards and downwards the subwoofer is not blown.

We as car audio technicians at the shop always use this method to tell if a speaker is blown because its the quickest. You could use a multimeter to read the ohms on the voice coil as an alternative if you are more techy savvy, but we provided the methods so the choice is in your hands. Any comments or problems you have let us know. 

Many Thanks.

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