Bridging stereo output for a single speaker.

I have a couple of 6x9s in the back.

On my old car I used to have a couple of 6x4s in the front too.

They all used to run straight off a reasonable quality clarion headunit.

Anyway, I no longer have door pods so I thought I fit a single 6x4 in the dash as their is a fitting for one in the old style dashes.

I connected the outputs for front left and front right positives and the outputs for front left and front right negatives to give just one positive and negative output.

It doesn't work. At low volumes it's ok but as I increase volume it makes the rear speakers distort.

What's going on?

I thought this was standard practice when people want to power woofers.

Peter.

By connecting it this way, you are doubling up the current through the speaker coil.

Try using either a higher power rated speaker or simply just connect up one channel in a mono old skool stylee. You only listen to Radio 4 anway right!?

Failing that, bin the radio for a true Series 1 look!

Cheers
Rajan

If you only have the headunit powering the speakers then you get what you get. The head unit on board amp isn't designed to be bridged and will probably knacker the stereo altogether. The 2 options you have are 1. just run the 2 pairs of speaker wires to the 2 speakers (ie front left and front right) and adjust the fader so all the power will go to those speakers. 2. buy an amp and power the speakers that way. Very easy to wire up and not too expensive (ebay!!) and will certainly improve on the sound.

good luck

Bowlesy
Mk1 Cabrio (quartet)

Sorry missed the point altogether. You could only run either the left or right  speaker wires not both as the stereo can't be bridged unless you get a speaker with a dual voice coil (which i doubt are available 6x4) which will accept 2 inputs.

Bowlesy
Mk1 Cabrio (Quartet)

Tallpete - what did you do in the end?

My partner is using the Golf C for her daily 20 mile commute and the old single speaker Blaupunkt has finally died. She cannot go much longer without tunes so a new stereo beckons. Going to get some Alpine 6x4s for rear speakers, but don't want to cut doorcards for front speakers.

Am I right in thinking that the options are
1) Run two rear speakers as normal and find a bridged front speaker that accepts both front L&R outputs… or… 2) just use two rear speakers.

Isn't the important part about bridging a speaker the impedence rating? If I rig up a single speaker to two outputs don't I simply need one with half the impedence rating of the other speakers? Seem to remember this from messing around guitar amps and speakers…… not sure I know what I am talking about  :? any other advice?

Cheers

From my experiences with Car Audio (which i hope is fairly good) I'll say the following.  By the way, any one feel free to correct me on any of this, as I'm not 100% sure, but I think I'm correct.

You can't run both sets of speaker wires into the one speaker, mainly because the you'll have two +ve outputs putting out different signals which will clash with each other and also two different -ve wires which don't actually run directly to ground, but into the amplifier circuitry. The whole thing will get very hot and sound naff, but I think we already established that.

Generally DVC speakers are only subs not full range speakers, and even if they were, you couldn't feed the L+R channels into the one speaker because if the two coils were moving at different rates (which they would be as the L+R outputs would be different) then the speaker would literally tear its self apart.  

Now as a solution, to be honest, I don't think there is a way to connect a modern headunit up to one mono speaker, they're just not intended to do that unfortunitely.  You might get away with it if you had an older style headunit where the speakers -ve is actually connected to ground.  

What I would do is run the two rear speakers, then may be only use either the L or R output in the front and just not connect the other one to anything. It shoudn't cause any real problems, except of course you won't get a very good sound stage, but you won't with a single speaker in the front anyway.

Hope that helps? If not, feel free to tell me to shut up     I do tend to ramble on a bit!

Thanks for all this info.

I see what you are saying, because it's stereo the two positive wires should supply different signals, so to link them to one speaker won't be very good.

I don't know why it was causing the back speakers to distort but the internal workings of a clarion headunit are perhaps more than I need to understand!

In answer to Marks question on what I did.

I just took the front speaker back out in the end.

I have two infinity 6x9s mounted in a home made 15mm MDF stealth shelf in the back powered straight from the head unit and the sound in my opinion is cracking.

I bought the speakers half price from Halfords, ?50 as opposed to ?100 and I'm really impressed.

It seems to me sound quality is 50% speaker quality and 50% speaker housing quality.

Dubboy, My friends got one of these new iPods with FM transmitters on, means you could wire up an old Blaupunkt and just tune it into the iPod frequency.

Maybe one for the future?

Cheers

Peter.

Peter

Mostly I have the original radio/speaker set up or non at all. TBH the iPOD thing has passed over me. Occasionally I use a portable CD player and speakers for long journeys.

Cheers
Rajan