Id like to retain my stock tweeters from my premium system (stock) but read in a tech brief that its range was regulated by a capacitor. Is there any way to verify this without hacking up door panels?

From the factory amp to the speakers are just leads... so I assume the capacitor is in the door somewhere.

 

what you do is take a 9v battery and touch the leads comming from the amp to the battery quick if the tweeter pops once but wont pop again for a few seconds there is a cap but if you can pop the tweeter over and over again then there is no cap.

reason this works is because a cap stores power for a few seconds so you can pop it once with the battery but it will take a few seconds b4 it will pop again.

 

The battery will pop the tweeter consistently right away. There will be no discernable (is that a word) difference between no cap and a cap installed.

Hook the tweeter up to your amp, or hell even to your RCA's and set your low pass at about 2000HZ, listen then try it again at 5000HZ. Is the 5K louder? If so, most likely there is a cap. Or look for the actual cap glued to the tweeter.

 

umm it will work just did it the other day at the install bay I manage same thing happens when you try to pop a speaker through a passive X-over.


It will pop once loud then you tap the wires on the battery again and it may make a very quite sound but most of the time it wont do a thing wait for 30sec and try again just to make sure.


FYI: LPF's in amps do not go up to 5k or even 2k for that matter

 

^ In addition to that, if you pop the speaker with a battery, then touch the speaker leads together again without the battery. If there is a cap in there, the tweeter will pop again as the cap discharges.