[Elecraft] Bad SP3 Documentation

[Randy Farmer]

I just received a new pair of SP3 speakers and began their installation 
last night. I built a new custom cable to feed the speakers from the 
outputs of my stereo amplifier using the pinout data supplied in the SP3 
manual. I also verified that the pinout shown pictorially (in two places 
in the manual) matched the schematic. Upon installation, nothing worked 
correctly -- I could only get right channel audio out of one of the 
speakers. I spent a while troubleshooting last night and resumed this 
evening. To make a somewhat long story short, I discovered that although 
the SP3 pictorials and schematic showed that the input connector 
expected right channel audio on the tip and left channel audio on the 
ring, the speaker was actually wired for left channel on the tip and 
right channel on the ring. Strangely enough, this is exactly the pinout 
shown for the speaker and headphone jacks in the K3 and K3S manuals. The 
connection from the left speaker output jack to the right speaker input 
carries right channel audio from the ring on the tip of the interconnect 
cable. I opened up one of the speakers and verified that it was wired to 
match the K3 standard. Once I reversed the left and right input sources 
the stereo pair started behaving as they should. If you're only using 
one SP3 in a mono configuration it will work just fine; it's only when 
you try to connect a pair in stereo that the documentation error becomes 
troublesome. I'd be real curious to know how the SP3 docs got to be so 
wrong. This problem should be corrected ASAP.

73...
Randy, W8FN