Outdoor speaker wires

Jk2050

Commendable
Dec 18, 2016
5
0
1,510
I have speaker wires coming out of the back of my house for back yard listening. I bought the house last year. There are only two hookups left inside the house and neither seem to operate the speaker I have attached to the outdoor wire. How do I check to see if the outdoor wire is working without access to the other end? Thanks
 
Solution
Without having any idea where your wire outputs the only option to find it (besides digging and ripping everything out) is to use a fox-and-hound toner probe. You can then disconnect the wire from the speaker and use the box to add a tone to the wire and trace it with the probe. Results greatly vary bassed on the quality of the tool you get. I had to drop $80 on a fluke brand toner/probe to get decent results. If wire is burried underground then this is not going to work very well.
Is your house, you must have access to everything.

Once you have access to both ends and you are confused which wire is which, you hookup on the speaker end, just one speaker, go the the other end, put an ohmmeter on the leads and it should read ~8 ohms. Open means that's not the end you thought.
 
Without having any idea where your wire outputs the only option to find it (besides digging and ripping everything out) is to use a fox-and-hound toner probe. You can then disconnect the wire from the speaker and use the box to add a tone to the wire and trace it with the probe. Results greatly vary bassed on the quality of the tool you get. I had to drop $80 on a fluke brand toner/probe to get decent results. If wire is burried underground then this is not going to work very well.
 
Solution