Question for audio people (and those that know the circuits)

So I recently bought some speakers from compgeeks.com for $15. They weren't bad. They got quite loud for the two little 3 inch speakers, but my major complaint was the bass. It was there, but it was unresponsive when the volume was down, you had to turn it WAY up to get the bass to go (it too was only a little 3 incher). So, I went to bestbuy and bought a couple 6.5" pioneer's for $20. Stuck those in a small wooden box I had. They were 4 ohms each, the sub that it came with was 8 ohms. After some fiddling around with the things being in parallel then realizing they should be in series, I put them in series. Ok, now I have some pretty good sounding bass. Then I realize that the main 3 inch speakers are still getting WAY too much bass so they sound bad. I don't know how to eliminate the bass from those speakers only, and they are prettty good for the middle ranges, so I bought some more of the pioneer's for $20 more because I figured they would do good on middle and decent on the lower.

Ok, so I tested the speakers with my new 6.5 inch subs and the stock 3 inch mains for a while (10 minutes maybe, on fairly loud). The little cooling fin things got QUITE hot. I turned it all off, cut the wires to the 3 inch speakers, hooked the wires to my pioneer's. No go. I think I fried the little power supply for it. The power supply for this is a standard wall plug with the converter in the subs (now sitting on myh floor with loose screws, so it is POSSIBLE I fried a capacitor, but I don't think I did). I got my dad's multimeter, hooked it up to where the converted AC (the supply is 15 volts DC, 1000 mA) goes, got about .05 volts AC (when I wasn't touching the wires I got .002 volts, so I think this is a valid reading). I hooked it up to the solder pads after the diodes and got no reading. Then I realized "duh, diodes drop the voltage around .3, and this is under .3 volts".

My speakers are putting out a VERY faint sound, as in, you almost have to touch your ear to the speakers to hear it. I am guessing that is because of the very slight voltage. Now, my problem is what to do? I have $40 in pioneer speakers sitting here, and another $15 in computer speakers and electronics that I cannot use. I have a 12 volt 1000 mA wall wart that I am thinking about hooking up after the diodes to see if that will give me some sound, but I don't want to get the polarity wrong (I assume I can as the plug is a polarized plug that can only go in one way on the original speakers) and fry the electronics completely.

So, my needs are this: How would I go about making a cheap amp to run these 4 speakers that will give all the bass to two of them, and everything but the bass to the other two, for under $20.

And: How would I go about fixing the coil that is supposed to be converting voltage, or should I just spend another $9 and wait a week to buy a 16 volt, 1000 mA or 1.5 amp wall wart from allelectronics.com and hook that up?

Any advice or cheap kits to let me run these 4 speakers off the headphone output jack on my laptop would be great. Or, if any of you could easily fix the coil or make a new one for 15 volts AC at 1 amp or whatever for pretty cheap, that would be great too. Anyway, I guess I'll be packing up these speakers and heading back to school in a couple hours.

Spud

Ok, I used a 12 volt, 1000mA wall wart I had lying around and touched the outputs to where the AC current goes in. I got a faint, high pitched soudn come out, the little power LED would slightly come on (I had power button turned off, though the power was plugged on) but then go out, and I could faintly hear sound come out of the speakers. I don't know if upping the voltage to 15 volts would matter. Also, I don't know if the diodes would even let any current pass. I will try to get pictures to you all later so you can give suggestions and such.

Spud

Open up the defective supply and inspect for burned parts and blown fuses.
BTW a power supply can fail in a dramatic way.
Once my friend tried to use an old PC power supply for a homemade amplifer.
As he was modding the supply he accidently dropped a screwdriver in it when it is on.
POW! The transistors exploded with such a loud bang that his ears hurt for a day afterward.

There isn't anything to open up. I took out all the guts of the sub (which had all the electronics in it. There are no burned parts, and there are no fuses at all. All there is powersupply wise is a coil that is shrinkwrapped, and then that goes to the board, which immediately has 4 diodes.

Another question, the original speakers are 5 watts max, 4 ohm speakers. My new ones are 4 ohms, 100 watts max, 20 watts continuous. I should be able to simply replace these shouldn't I as the impedence is the same? Same with the subs. The original is 10 watts max (or thereabouts) and 8 ohms, I have two of the 20 watters in series to make 8 ohms, so they should be able to just replace right?

Does anybody know of a CHEAP way to hook up the wires directly? Like are there any recievers or whatever they are called that will take bare-wired speakers (no rca plugs or headphone plugs) that wouldn't cost more than like $10 or $20? Yeah, I laughed at that one myself.

Spud

Ok, so I have the 15.5 volt 1+ amp power supply for my rayovac quick charger. I hooked it up after the diodes on my circuit, got power at the LED power indicator. However, no sound came out. When I took the power off, I got a little bit of sound that faded as the capacitor discharged.

What have I fried? Why won't it amplify sound? What can I do to try to get it to work again?

Please help, I don't want to eat a $15-20 dollar mistake, then be stuck with $40 of speakers I can't use....

(If you don't know of a good way to fix my current problem, perhaps you can point me in the direction of a cheap audio reciever or amplifier I could hook my output to (via stereo plug or rca plug) and then hook my speakers to that? Please help somebody, I want decent sound but have already spent a LOT (well, for me, plus I have to pay a bunch of money for a certain other thing later ($170 or so)).

Spud

Assuming that the Rayovac pack is wired correctly into the power-input (not reversed-polarity), you may need o desolder the diodes in the fried supply- if they shorted, it could be causing the Rayovac to do something similar.

For the problem of isolating the sound frequencies, to allow the speakers to work best.... Radio-Shack sells several crossover networks (read: devices that send highs to tweeters, mids to midranges and lows to woofer/subwoofers)

As for the amp, I gave in and bought a $200 5.1 Reciever, with 100w/channel, so I have all the neat features. WAY the hell overkill for what I do with it.

I hooked the rayovac power up to the place AFTER the diodes, so I don't think they did anything. Also, I think polarity was right because when I hooked it up the other way, I just got a spark, no lit LED for power. I can't really afford a $200 reciever though, that is the problem. Maybe I could afford $50, but not $200. Perhaps I should sell a couple lights, but I don't have much worth selling so I could make like $35 or $40 max is all.

Anyway, I am open to all suggestions, and hopefully I'll get a chance to undo those diodes and see if that is the problem.

Spud

This probably isn't of much use to you now, but have a look here.