Whelen 295slsa6 siren not working
- Thread starter DatedGore
- Start date
JohnMarcson
Administrator
So not all 100watt speakers are created equal. There are lower ohm ratings on cheap sirens. That and cheaper parts makes for high rates of failure. For testing your Whelen siren should make very quiet siren tones from the "box" when not hooked up to a speaker. Don't run it that way too long, but it is a way to test it. That said your professional grade siren needs a professional grade speaker. I have had very good luck with all major brands of speakers, but had some very early failures on cheap ones that were rated the same wattage. There is an ongoing debate about whether the actual ohm rating (8 vs. 11) is to blame or if it is simply poor construction. I am more apt to believe it is poor construction. Speakers are essentially big electromagnets fighting with big regular magnets to create sound. More properly explained;
Speakers work by converting electrical energy into mechanical energy. When an electric current is sent through a coil of wire, it induces a magnetic field. Current is sent through the voice coil which produces an electric field that interacts with the magnetic field of the permanent magnet attached to the speaker. Like charges repel each other and different charges attract. As a signal is sent through the voice coil and the waveform of the tone moves up and down, the voice coil is attracted and repelled by the permanent magnet. This makes the cone that the voice coil is attached to move back and forth. The back and forth motion creates pressure waves in the air that translate to sound. All speakers have an impedance rating in ohms, which represents how difficult the speaker is to power.
That said, the quality of the components matter a lot. The wire windings, the cone, the magnet the connections...all of it matters. Cheap speakers have bad solder jobs, wire windings that aren't properly spaced, inferior cone construction, improper heat distribution, badly placed water drain holes and the list goes on. You have a professional grade siren, it needs a speaker to match, I know i keep saying that. A bad speaker with a good siren is like putting cheap tires on a performance vehicle.
Each major company has a slim/compact and a "standard" siren speaker in the $175-$250 range, and they are well worth it. I like Whelen SA315 $195, Whelen SA340 $270, Federal AS24 $190, Federal ES100 (dynamax) $265, Sound Off 100J $160, Code 3 Z100 (if you have room) $190, Code 3 C3500 $1901, Sho-Me MotorCycle, scoop, cut-down and standard bell $200, and Carson "Versa" $150 if it fits. The only non-big brand or economy model I would use is the Strobes N' More Phantom $70, which is debatably meant to be paired with their specific siren, and while I like Strobes N' More products I would still spend the extra money to go big brand.
As far as used speakers go, you really need to know the history. One off of a rarely driven support unit from a southern state and one off a daily driver patrol car in the land of road salt are very different animals. I have to replace the speakers on our first due rigs each spring, give or take. The trade off for mounting them out front is they catch everything, and we have road salt here 4 months a year. I test my sirens with a brick of an old atlas 100w which accepts various cones. It is kind of my benchmark for testing. I would find the major brand speaker that fits your mounting needs the best and costs the least. In my experience all the major brand sirens hold up well and sound similar. The mounting location is the real volume level factor.
