No bass from RT55

[beetle]

One of my wife's RT55 bookshelf speakers stopped playing bass. There is no visible damage to the drivers, and at no time were the speakers overdriven. I read somewhere where it could either be the crossover of the woofer, and I did switch the L & R to be sure there wasn't another issue. B I also read that it could either be a woofer or a burned-out crossover, but I can't get the speaker open to find out. Seems it has a strange kind of hex screw, and I cannot find the right tool to open it with.

Any ideas or suggestions on what it could be or what to do? The speakers are seven years old, and out of warranty.

Oh yeah, she does not have them bi-wired, but one of the jumpers are missing. It's been playing just fine without it, but could that have any bearing on the situation?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[steveinaz]

Yes, the jumpers need to BOTH be in place. You can substitute a small piece of speaker wire.

[danger boy]

yup.. make a jumper out of wire.. it needs the jumper if you are not bi amping them... the hex screw is called a Torx screw.. similar to a hex, but not. it's more star shaped. you can get a torx screw set at your local Lowes or Home Depot. good to have one around.

[michael_w]

In this case I'd just replace all the jumpers with small sections of wire for consistency. Some people say they can tell a difference between using the stock jumpers and some homemade / aftermarket ones so what you've discovered might actually be an improvement (with the issue of actually having the speaker run properly aside).

[beetle]

I was hoping someone could give me some insight to why the woofers aren't puttin' out any bass in one of the speakers. There is absolutely no sound from the woofers at all. Could this be indicative of the crossover being burned out, as I have read elsewhere?

[michael_w]

There are two sets of binding posts. The top ones are essentially hooked up to the tweeters and the bottom ones to the woofers. If the jumpers aren't there then the woofers won't be producing anything at all.

[beetle]

But, then, how has it been playing correctly with one missing jumper all this time?

[RuSsMaN]

It hasn't, unless you are using a bare wire connection and something was making contact with the second post.

[beetle]

Thanks guys! It was indeed the missing jumper. I just used a piece of copper wire to fix that.

Now, i'm wondering what happened to the jumper, and why I didn't notice the missing bass. And i'm an audiophile! Well, an embarrassed one, that is!