speaker polarity ?

Just wondering if anyone can tell me the polarity of the wires for the stock speakers for a "91 Cherokee Larado. The connector is only marked as "A" and "B". Crutchfield could tell me if I had bought my speakers thru them, but I didn't, so they won't. Anyway, thanks to anyone who might be able to help out.

If you look at the back of the speaker where the connector hooks up to it usually one of the metal tabs that the connector plugs into is bigger than the other one. The bigger tab is going to be positive and the smaller one is going to be negative. Most speakers are like this but not all of them.

Another way to tell is to disconnect the speaker and use a piece of scrap wire and a cordless drill battery (lower voltage the better). Take the wire and and hook it to the speaker and then hold it on the other end of the wire to the battery. The battery will be marked with a + or - and then see which way the speaker moves. If it moves out, then it is correct polarity, if the speaker sucks in, then the polarity is reversed. Clear as mudd??? let me know if I can help any other way. Later....assgas:

Unfortunatly the stock connectors have identical sized pins, both male(speaker side) and female(wire side). Both sides are enclosed within plastic connectors. The only differences are the wire colors (solid green to "B" and dark gray? w/strip to "A") and the A/B designations on the speaker side of the connector. What I get from the local stereo shops is to just hook them up all the same and it won't really matter which is which. I just figured I'd at least try to get it right. But I'm probably just making it more difficult on myself more than anything else.

The polarity is really on a phase matching. In many mobile applications it really doesn't matter which way you hook them up (ergo, the audio techs comments). However, as previously posted, use the battery test to connect in phase.
Sometimes, when speakers are not mounted close to each other (i.e., mids on the doors and tweeters up in the dash), reversing the polarity on tweeters or mids makes the system sound better because it makes up for phase differences due to distance. Try different combinations and see what sounds better.

A .... +
B .... -

(all the info in the above posts is valid, except for the lugs sizes...the 91(at least the later part of the year had different size lugs for +/-)

i just did new speakers in mine and the green is negative and the grey/white is positive, so ^^^

You'll be able to hear the difference in the bass response if you have the wires reversed. Polarity reversed will diminish bass as the speakers will not be moving in phase with each other. Polarity correct will net you deeper/tighter bass. If the above suggestions don't work for you hook up two speakers, reverse the wires on one and see which gives better bass. (turning the treble and midrange down and bass all the way up at low volume levels helps hear the difference) Then move onto the next and next if replacing all four. Hope this helps,
Cherokid

Thanks for all the help. I got them in and wired up as mentioned earlier, A=+ and B=-. They sound great, especially compared to stockers w/no foam around the cones. The only things that took any time was removing the male side of the connectors from the speakers and making my own "pig-tail" connectors out of them for the new speakers and getting the new larger speakers behind the panels so they look like stocker, unless you look a little closer. Thanks again for all the help.