Fixing Subwoofer Buzz for $10 or less!!! 

I can canoe.

Sweet! I'm still enjoying this sub too. The repair is still working well, which I'm really happy about because I love this little sub and don't want to spend a ton of money trying to replace it.

That may be why you inherited the speaker system. If replacing the caps does the trick, someone may be sad they got rid of them. If the speakers are in good shape, they really do sound fantastic.

agreed that cutting is better but for through-hole connections i really don't think that's an issue worth worrying about. surface-mount for sure, i'd recommend never doing that

That's excellent! And that's a lot of money in your pocket too. You should go have a nice dinner tonight!

Floyd Nash will do,sir,listening to some good country music through the sub and enjoying the sound,thanks again,going out for dinner soon lol.

Success! The caps arrived yesterday and I had it fixed by dinner! Thanks!

Hopefully the fix went well. These are really good subs. If I ever see another, you bet I'm buying it!

I hope it works. Mine has been fine ever since my fix. Using it right now rewatching some old Star Wars movies

I recommend using Amazing Goop as a replacement glue. It has a high temperature rating, it holds well and if you ever need to remove it, it usually pulls away with a yank from needle nose pliers.

Good luck! Hope it's an easy fix

I miss Radio Shack too. I used to go there for all kinds of things when I was younger. I made an LED display for my car radio with all parts, including IC chips, that I got right at my local Radio Shack. If I buy online I prefer to use Mouser or Digikey for parts, but hate paying $8 shipping for an 84 cent part. I end up going to Amazon where some of the parts can be questionable quality.

of course, one symptom may lead to up to ten others with a board.

New caps fixed the issue! I replaced the stock ones with 85 °C with 105 °C. I used a flathead screwdriver to break the epoxy/glue and get them loose before de soldering.

Glad this could help someone. I hope the capacitors were easier to get out than mine. That glue on mine made them a royal mess to extract. It was worth it though. It's still working perfectly.

Good point. Don't just randomly start replacing capacitors. It's usually the larger ones near where the cord comes into the unit. It can be different sizes or specs depending on the manufacturer and rating of the sub. Look for obvious damage first as well.

If you want a more empirical method to detecting bad capacitors, you can use an ESR meter to test each capacitor while still soldered on the board! I know the point of the video is to do the repair for less than $10, but sometimes it's not so clear which capacitors are bad. Still a very good video and thanks for sharing!

An erratic sound doesn't sound like capacitor issue. That could be a volume control knob or some other adjustment knob. Unplug everything from it except power, turn it on. If you hear humming, that could be power supply, which could be a capacitor issue. If it's something else, like a scratchy sound, then it's probably something else.

That's not a bad idea, but even before that, just unplug the cable. If you still have a buzz when the only thing plugged in is power, then it's not a cable issue.

Oh, that's a really good idea. I didn't think of using my dremel

What attachment do you use? Just a cutting wheel? Sanding drum? Stainless bristles? Thanks

It's very possible that is exactly what is happening. Unless a capacitor blows up, they can indeed go bad over a period of time. My sub started out the same way, with a small buzz on startup that went away quickly, but eventually just never went away and started getting worse pretty rapidly. If they aren't glued down like mine, they are very easy to replace.

Agreed. I got this set a few years ago at a great price. I have a nano-sat set up with this sub. Back when I got it, the whole setup was selling for $800. $100 per nano-sat and $300 for the sub. I caught a sale where you buy the nano-sats and get the sub for free, plus free shipping. That was a stretch for me then, but I jumped on it anyway, and have been super happy every single day that I did. The sound quality is the best I've ever had.

That black plastic may be just a cover over the silver part, unless the plastic has those little "cut" lines in it. Then it's just a cheap capacitor. Good luck, hope replacing the capacitors does the trick for you!

I had to use the soldering iron to burn it off just to remove the cap. Scraping this is out of the question without a hammer and chisel. It sucked!

That's entirely possible. They could be connecting to the legs of 2 different circuits or set of traces on the board. Sometimes they are simply laid out in whatever manner would make it easiest to fit the components.

Yes, they sure can. They don't have to physically show signs of failure to be bad unfortunately. It's easier to tell for sure when you do see external evidence.

That makes total sense. With the small cost of the capacitors, and considering I have spares I think I'll be ok. I would rather replace them than remove that glue any day. It was a giant pain to remove.

@@FloydNashFixItDad It would take a while, but the effects could be a lot worse than just having a 60 hz hum. If the two capacitor are not in parallel, there would be no filtering in the lines at all if the solder joint or leads are broken. The smaller caps are less critical since it has less mass, but the larger ones are prone to this type of failure, especially in a vibration rich environment like a subwoofer. Its relatively easy to apply some hot glue to hold the caps down since you already soldered it down. The work is really to open up the speakers again. The hot glue you are using is much easier to remove. Next time if you have glue on the caps, use a hot air source like a rework station instead of the soldering iron, it softens the glue and makes it much easier to remove. You just use a sharp tweezer and yank the glue off in chunks. The rework stations are perfect since you can control the air volume and limit the heat to local areas. They are relatively cheap and its great for shrink heat tubing.

@@ahndeux I was really hoping someone would talk about this in a comment. :-) I'm going to do mine as well and I'm sure it has the same glue on it. I'll try the rework station and see how it goes. Thanks for explaining this!

He needs some flush cutters.

@@richardsparks9904 And a sponge for the solder tip. Xacto blades are not meant to clean solder tips. LOL. I think he work hardened the solder joint just going back and forth on the wire to break it off. At the minimum, he should remelt the solder afterwards to relieve the stress on that solder joint. Solder joints don't last forever. There is a finite number of thermal cycling which is worse if the temperature swings are higher. The newer "lead free" ROHS solder is worse because its stiffer and flows at a higher temperature, so they fail quicker than the older 60/40 tin lead solder. A lot of modern electronics fail much quicker than older electronics for that reason.

There should be additional markings on the capacitor that show a voltage and rating, usually listed as uF. If you hear a hum then it's potentially power supply, and potentially those filter capacitors. It can also be the power coming into the house. You can get surge strips designed for audio equipment, or hum eliminators that act as ground loop isolators, that will also have filter capacitors in them to help filter out a good part of that 50 or 60 cycle hum, so that may be an option for you to try as well. If it's not enough to bother you, I don't know that I would try messing with anything right now either.

It's possible. If you have a good electronics shop in your area they could remove and test the capacitors, but it's really getting hard to find places like that any more.

Yes, it’s very possible the caps could be bad even though they aren’t bulging. Capacitors frequently fail with no exterior sign they are bad, the only way to check them is if you use an ESR meter.

My preferred source for electronics components is DigiKey. The whole point here though was to show the average person how to do this repair with as little special as possible. Amazon is something most people are already familiar with. So far, the "cheap" capacitors have been working well for 4 years and have zero issues. If this were a more sensitive circuit then I might have used higher quality components, but this is just a basic filter to remove that 60 cycle hum so it really doesn't have to be that special. I've never actually seen issues with the glue causing anything other than problems removing a component. I've also heard it can become conductive, but so far have never actually seen that happen. I didn't want to burn it off but there was so much of it I had to do whatever I could to get enough off to remove the old capacitors. It's OK to use glue but this was just overkill.

@@FloydNashFixItDad yea, he’s right, that yellow glue, or I think specifically it’s actually nylon epoxy, is an absolute NIGHTMARE. The fact that it has been used for so long on sooooo many different electronic item leads me to believe one thing. There isn’t a chance in hell that the manufacturers do not know that this glue DOES in fact turn brown, become conductive, AND it definitely does become corrosive as well. It can short components out and I’ve seen it many times literally completely eat through the leads on components as well. If it has degraded to that point it’s dark dark brown, and it’s actually much easier to remove than if it was still yellow. Yellow it’s a bitch to remove but the brown stuff can be scraped off relatively easily. For the life of me I can’t believe that no company has been sued for 100% intentionally using the glue to enable planned obsolescence for their electronics. If they had stopped using it after hundreds of thousands of electronics had died from it over decades of use, j might believe it wa unintentional. But after opening up an amp that was built 2 years ago and finding this shit slathered all over it, you’d never be able to conivimcr me thru aren’t planning the obsolescence of this stuff. It’s like a perfect time bomb, set to go off after warranty is up.

Check the little fuse in there. Mine was a teeny little fuse, something like a 1 or 2 amp and for some reason after replacing the caps it kept blowing immediately. I took a gamble and uses a 5 amp fuse and it's been working great ever since. I think the new caps just have a higher initial amperage requirement.

@@FloydNashFixItDad Hi again Floyd, I replaced the old fuse with a 5 amp fuse. However, when I plugged in the power cord, I heard a pop from my wall outlet and tripped the circuit breaker. D'OH! What have I done - LOL? Any suggestions are definitely appreciated - thanks!

@@addnh Not so sure on that one. I'm not an electrical engineer, but it certainly sounds like something else in there is bad and causing the amp to pull a huge amount of current at start up.

@@FloydNashFixItDad Yeah, that's kind of what I figured, too. Thanks again for the great video!

By this is obviously old, but did you make sure to install the caps with the correct polarity? That could definitely be your problem. You have to make sure they are installed the same way as the ones you removed. The side of the capacitor with the line on in, as well as the side of the cap with the shorter leg , is the negative side. The side with the longer leg and no line is the positive. There is frequently a marking on the PCB with a “+” indicator as well.

That may be the volume control. Those were known to do that. Pull the knob off and spray the control with tuner cleaner and twist back and forth and that may get it to stop doing that

@@FloydNashFixItDad no volume control is a separate device,its not on one of the speakers..3 speakers plus the volume control that also has plugins for headphones ect

Well, if it doesn't work and there is no option then might as well try. Just take your time and take it slow

That's probably a bad idea. It might increase the start up voltage requirements which could burn out other components or start blowing fuses, could change the frequency being filtered, or any number of things. It could also increase the effectiveness by decreasing the ripple that causes the hum in the first place, but I don't think so. The circuit is designed to have the proper size capacitor for the circuit, so I would stick with the one it was designed for.

I wish I could help but don't know what you are asking. Something about a 2030 IC?

Good question. If you have access to a capacitor tester, you could remove them and test them, but that's not something most people have available. You could take it to a shop and have them test them, but that might cost more than just replacing the capacitors to see what happens. If you feel comfortable replacing them, and can get replacements for a good price, it may be worth changing them to see what happens. If that's not the problem, at least you've ruled out a possibility.

It depends on the circuit design for your amp. These can literally be almost any voltage or capacitance. It's whatever the engineers that designed the circuit ended up deciding was best for that application. Match what is in your amp currently so you know you have the correct part. If you have to substitute, go larger. If, for instance, I couldn't have found a 63V capacitor, I would not generally want to substitute with 50V. That may be too small and the smaller capacitor could blow up or not last as long. I would want to find something the same capacitance, but a higher voltage, like 75 volt or 100 volt.

@@FloydNashFixItDad On the capacitors, is there a positive and negative designated for each of the wires or does it matter which way they are installed. Seems easy enough. Update: I missed where you mentioned the stripped part. I'll have to look out for that if I need to order. $10 for capacitors is alot cheaper than $300 for a new amp esp since the pricing on those went up.

@@amb7247 Yes, it most definitely matters which way they are installed. If you look on the capacitor, one side will have a stripe. Keep track on the old one which side that stripe is on and put the replacement capacitor on the same side. There may also be a + and - sign on there also. On the capacitors with both legs sticking out one end, the striped side is generally negative.

Unfortunately there are a million answers to such a generic question. It could be not getting power, bad cord, blown fuse, power supply went bad. A cable connection to the rest of the system could be bad. Output on the other unit could be bad or input on the sub went bad. You'll just have to start checking thru things bit by bit to isolate the trouble point

Hi Dragan, is this sound happening while it's plugged in, or when it's just sitting there powered on? If happens plugged in only then I would suspect maybe a bad cable somewhere.

@@FloydNashFixItDad it only happens when the unit is powered on. Last night listening to music at low volume. I could hear a little pop or crackle every now and then? I have had a situation where the braided wire connecting to the voice coil touching the whizzer. I've never seen that one before. Thanks for the quick reply. If it is powered on with no music? It's quiet but any loud music? And sound becomes less . I hope that makes sense? Cheers

I think it's mostly for vibration but not sure. I didn't see a real need either. The replacements have no glue and have been working fine for years now.

Now that I know for certain that the issue was the capacitors, if I need to replace them again, I'll go higher end. These were a nice, well reviewed option that I decided on so I wouldn't waste so much money if it was something other than the capacitors. So far, they have held up very well and had zero issues, and since I got a bag with several, I actually have spares.

Floyd Nash can you please provide the link of where you purchased the capacitors on Amazon, I have a JBL Sub300 with the same loud buzzing ,I’ve checked the amp plate , on these you can see the cross but both of them look flat so I’m not sure if that’s the actual cause of the issue but I would like to discard that out. There are some guys on eBay that you send them they complete plate, they fix it for a flat rate and send it back, the thing is the flat rate is $140 plus shipping that represents half the price if purchased as new the whole unit I don’t see a smart investment there. Regards

Don’t buy your caps on eBay. Buy them on mouser or digikey. Like 90% of the caps on eBay are fakes.

I am not totally sure. I don't think this would affect the cutting out issue. That sounds like something else is going on.

I was too. It was really hard to get off as well. At that point though, I figured the sub is toast so I might as well try.

Either the caps weren't big enough or there is another issue going on

They were correctly rated. I've reinstalled the old ones and it's back to how it was - buzzing and unusable 😂

If it's only for a second and goes away, then I wouldn't change anything. The capacitors need time to charge to full capacity, so it may just be that they are a tad larger than needed and takes enough time to be noticeable. If it operates perfectly after that then I would wait and see what happens and just enjoy it.

It depends on the application, but the first thing you want to match is the capacitance (the uf rating). The wrong rating will cause you to have the wrong results for your circuit. Then you want to size it for your circuit. A huge capacitor in a 5 volt circuit won't do anything, and a tiny little capacitor in an application like this, would blow up immediately, or at least not filter like it's supposed to. So, the answer really is both matter a great deal. You always want to try and match the original.

@@FloydNashFixItDad thank you, i change my 2200uf 25v with 2200uf 35v but it is not fix i don't know what to do...???

@@domynicdomy8407 if it still has hum plugged into electricity, but with nothing plugged into it, and you've replaced the filter capacitors in the power supply, then you may have another issue. The capacitor replacement just fixes one of the most common issues, not all of them that are possible.

@@FloydNashFixItDad thank you I'll try it

Yes, mine did the same. I think the newer caps charge faster and have a higher initial draw. I think the OEM fuses were 2 amp if I remember right, and I want to say it was a 5 amp I decided to use instead, and it's been working just fine ever since, and it's been right under 2 years.

@@FloydNashFixItDad Thank you for the quick reply! I tried the 5amp 250v and it burned out but maybe that was too much. The OEM one is 1amp 250v, I'll go to lowes today and see if they sell the 2amp 250v as the auto parts store dont seem to have it.

@@chrislmcnair you should triple check that you installed the capacitors with the correct polarity. If you installed one or both backward they would instantly blow the fuse as well.

No, those can vary depending on your specific application. The capacitor for my sub might be different than what is needed in yours. You would have to see what is in place currently and get a comparable replacement. Sorry, but electronics are pretty picky like that.

So many people miss the point of this video. It's to show the average person how to do this. Maybe I could have used nail clippers in retrospect, but most people don't have side cutters so I showed them an alternate way to get this done without having to buy a bunch of tools. Even if it only prolongs the life another 2, 3, 4 years, it's still better than having to fork over the cash for a new subwoofer, especially at prices today.

100% right

I haven't seen one before. So, what is yours doing, or not doing? Does it power on? Does it make noise it shouldn't? If it doesn't power on, there is a fuse next to the power cord so don't forget to check that first.

You may have to start looking at the circuit for the sub portion. It sounds like it may be a separate circuit with it's own amp, and may have capacitors to help regulate voltage on that side. Look for any caps that may be smaller than the primary ones in the power supply, that have bulging tops to them.

@@FloydNashFixItDad today i replaced all the capacitors because it was about 15+ years old sub .. but fault was still. Yesterday i replaced 2 audio ICs TDA2030 but buzzing was not removed. Today one thing came in my mind that i should replace all the audio ICs at once may be new and old ICs not compatible, and i replaced all 7 audio ICs and now sub working perfect .. well thanks to you i learnt from your video

@@TheMati420 You went WAY beyond what most people would do. Excellent job!. It's amazing just how little the individual components cost compared to the amount you pay for the assembled product.

@@FloydNashFixItDad yes I bought 10 capacitors and 7 audio ICs TDA2030 in just 2.5 $😋😋 and the new home theater like this is about 300 $$ here in market .

HA HA! Yes... remember, this is the country that has a game called football, that's neither played with the foot, nor does it use a ball shaped object. We still don't use the metric system, and we can't pronounce aluminium properly, so it's only natural that it would be "sodder".

@@FloydNashFixItDad LOL I am so glad you found humour in my comment. Please don't tell me I misspelled "humor" 😀