Help: 1960's in-ceiling speakers and wall volume controls

[Jgm70]

Hi all,

I have recently purchased a house from the 1960's. This house has a total of 11 in-ceiling speakers with 8 total volume controls in the wall.

I would love to get this hooked back up, but having a hard time understanding how this all comes together.

The volume controls knobs are Audiotex (CAT NO 30-372) L - PAD 8 OHM:

None of them in the house were hooked up, but they have wires all ran through a box in the wall - Red, green, blue, black, white, and brown

In the main living area, there are three separate areas that have 1/4 inch jacks and next to it, a plate that has what seems to be speaker wire behind them that says JSC BANNER 10 strand.

My initial idea was to buy an amplifier and modern 8 ohm volume controls, but unsure how/if I could reuse the wire that is currently in the walls and what to do with the speaker wire and 1/4 inch outlets.

Any ideas of how all this used to work and what I could do to get it up and running again would be incredibly helpful (the lady thinks i'm gonna burn the house down so I am coming here first haha)

Thanks
Joe

 

[Robh3606]

Any ideas of how all this used to work and what I could do to get it up and running again would be incredibly helpful (the lady thinks i'm gonna burn the house down so I am coming here first haha)

Hello

You need to ohm it out to trace what goes where and how it's all wired. Basically draw a schematic to understand what's going on and what the switches do. What condition are the ceiling speakers in? Do they even still work? Are they worth going through all the trouble of hooking them up?

Are they in stereo pairs? Summed mono? Wired in series or parallel or a combination to help keep the impedance manageable?

That jack could be a stereo headphone jack or an input? One of the wires looks like 300 ohm FM antenna wire with the spacing.

My son moved into a house with the a very similar set-up. We looked at what it would take and went portable bluetooth.

Good luck if you decide to trace it out.

Rob