Which rear speaker wires are the positives?

[Starship]

Hello Everyone:

BACKGROUND: I have a 2012 Vulcan Voyager -- with a Harley-Davidson King Tour-Pack installed in place of the OEM touring truck (much larger carrying capacity!). I therefore have Harley speaker boxes attached to the Tour-Pack.

WHAT I KNOW: I am installing rear speakers into those boxes and since I do not have the wiring harness that comes with the Kawasaki rear speaker kit, I have cut off the stock rear speaker plugs that are under the seat and added my own wires to serve the rear speakers. I have already run the wires towards the speakers. I know that under the seat there are two factory plugs for the rears speakers and that the clear plug is for the left speaker and the black plug is for the right speaker.

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW:
Which of the two wires coming from each of those plugs is positive and which is negative:

On the clear (left) plug, the two wires appear to be:
1. Blue with a white stripe
2. Black with a Blue strip

On the black (right) plug, the two wires appear to be:
1. Black with a white stripe
2. Blue with a Red stripe

I have a high-quality multi-meter and I know how to use in (in general), but I don't know which wires to test or what the values should be.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Kevin

[SgtSlag]

The speakers are coils -- coils are not polarized. An audiophile may say different, and they may be right, I just don't know.

Having said that polarity doesn't matter, I will say that black is associated with negative voltage, and red is associated with positive voltage. If you want to be certain, put the red striped wire to positive, and the black striped wire to negative. To be absolutely certain, you would need an oscilloscope to measure the voltage on the wires, with a resistive load. Looking them up in the FSM's wiring diagram is another method, if they show it. Cheers!

[Starship]

Hi Grand Tourer,

Thank you very much for the information that you provided. I greatly appreciate that!

[suzib6sw]

Coils need to be energized to move in the same direction at the same time when voltage is applied to them otherwise your speakers will be "out of Phase".. The upshot will be that your bass content will be drastically reduced and when you are sat between the speakers, you will not, on a good piece of stereo music, be able to place a voice or instrument.. Ideal piece of "Modern Music" to test the stereo separation is Queen, Breakthru.. Get past the slow part, and right at the beginning of the fast part, the drums switch from side to side.. with a distinct left and right component.. If the speaks are out of phase, the positioning will be indistinct and almost echoey giving a pseudo "surround Sound" effect.. Yuck... Orchestral classical music, you should be able to place the violins on the left and the double basses on the right..

The "easy way" to check polarity is to momentarily connect a battery to the speaker terminal.. Just a momentary touch mind you else you'll burn out the coils, and watch the direction the cone moves.. Both speakers should move the same direction...
Also check on the speaker terminals themselves.. Often one tag is either bigger than the other.. I generally choose the bigger tag as + or look for the + and - in stamped into the insulation they are mounted on..

[96desertXII]

I believe that red stripe and blue stripe are the positives on the speakers. I just changed my speakers and IIRC that's what I found.

[Kevin B in Illinois]

I would love to see a pic of the bike with the HD tour pak installed. Did you also install the LED lights on the back of the tour pak. They came out with a new light bar that allows the full size tour paks to be used without the loss of space that used to exist when you had an Ultra. I know many owners have upgraded to this brake light kit and installed the new liner to utilize the full ability of the HD tour pak. I have to say from having owned two Ultra's that the HD Tour Pak is the best in the business for hauling and packing. It is also the sturdiest one in my opinion. ( I have owned Two Honda GL1500SE's, 7 Voyager XII's , 1 Vulcan Voyager 1700 , a BMW K1200LT , two HD Electra Glide Ultra's and a Yamaha Royal Star Venture, as well as about 65 other motorcycles. ) Post a pic if you can.

Kevin Braddy
IPVMC
President

[richardb, austin]

Breakthru? Via speakers, not headphones? I don't think so.

[ekap1200]

The "easy way" to check polarity is to momentarily connect a battery to the speaker terminal.. Just a momentary touch mind you else you'll burn out the coils, and watch the direction the cone moves.. Both speakers should move the same direction...
Also check on the speaker terminals themselves.. Often one tag is either bigger than the other.. I generally choose the bigger tag as + or look for the + and - in stamped into the insulation they are mounted on.. (Quote; Pete )

I was taught that the way to identify the speaker terminals with a double or triple ( A ) battery is to momentarily touch the terminals and if correct polarity is in order the cone will move outward. As for the feed wires I am not sure, but I would hook the speaker wires to the speaker and use the meter, dropping the voltage selection down until the pointer shows some movement. Haveing that in mind , perhaps connecting the speaker wires up and observing the cone movement will shed some light on the polarity. A shot it the dark would be to use the black/tracer wires as negative, and watch the cone movement. I would bet Pete went to the workbench and tinkered with his meter on a radio to shed more info on this. Just my two cents. Gene