Didn't know exactly how to word my subject line, but here is my question: Does it matter which speaker gets the positive signal first when wiring in series and which one gets the final negative signal back to the amp.
The reason I'm asking is this: I've been running my 4-ohm tweeters in parallel with my 4-ohm front door speakers for about 6 months. Even with a resistor AND bass blocker, I'm still blowing up tweeters! I've burned up a pair of Alpines AND a pair of Cerwin-Vegas already! Yes, I realize WHY this is happening. By running them in parallel, I'm doubling the impedance of the load, which makes the amp put out a lot more power. Sure, I have my amp gains set way down, but if I crank up the stereo past about half volume for very long, the tweeters fry. Never have fried my 4-way Pioneer 6.5's thankfully, only cheap tweeters.
SO, now that I've just purchased a pair of 3-ohm JBL GTO629 speakers for my front doors, before I fry my NEXT pair of tweeters, I want to run them all in SERIES instead of parallel so I lessen the risk of frying something. I can just turn my gains back up a bit if I need to.
Back to my question. I keep wondering if it would matter which speaker gets the positive signal first, since the tweeters have bass blockers and separate resistors connected to their positive leads. My guess is that it would be best to run my signal to the door speakers FIRST, then through the tweeters back to the amp to complete the series because it seems to me that if I run the positive signal from the amp to the tweeters first, then the bass blockers and resistors would cut down on the frequencies hitting the JBL's in the doors.
Is this a correct assumption? I've wired more speakers and subs in parallel over the years than I can begin to count, but have never wired any in series. Never had a reason to, and always new my amp would just have to work that much harder to do its job. But I'm worried that since these brand new JBL speakers are 3 ohms and the brand new Cadence tweeters are 4 ohms, running them in parallel would give me a 3.5 ohm load to my Nakamichi amp! Sure, the amp is 2-ohm stable, but running it at 2 ohms it allegedly puts out 110 wpc RMS and at 4 ohms it puts out 75 wpc RMS. That's just a lot more power than I want/need to deliver to tweeters that only handle 50 wpc RMS.
So am I correct in assuming I should run the positive signal from the amp to the JBL door speaker FIRST, then to the tweeter?
Thanks! Hope I didn't make this too confusing. I really need to stop frying tweeters, and since this pair of Cadence are probably the best sound ones I've ever owned because of their crystal clear highs, I don't want to fry these already after they've only been in for 2 days (even though I'm still on a search for even better tweeters!).
I guess I should have asked if it's even a good idea to MIX Impedences! Opinions?