Toronto Passions

Any audiophiles here?

Ponderling

Lotsa things to think about
Jul 19, 2021
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Mississauga
A post I DM'ed that I thought a wider audience might like:
Youtube has some examples.
I usually just reuse the cone.
New foam can be bought at electronic shops like the row of them on Matheson near Dixie out in Sauga.
Or Amazon, likely.

I do all of this with speaker out of the cabinet.
Some might fix them with cabinet on its back, but that is too hard for me.

First step is measure resistance of voice coil with ohm meter.
Cone may click a bit with the test DC voltage applied - thats ok.

If you hear scraping, be cautious.
Overheating from hard use can cause winding glue to come undone and that is beyond my means to fix.
Can sniff this out with the smell with your nose to - hot plastic smell left overs.

If the 'spider' - the pleated material that holds the tapered back of the cone in place is torn
Game over.

I usually work dust cover off.
Use acetone or rubbing alcohol dabbed on glue with a damp q tip bit by bit
Let is sit a bit.
Test try to see if glue is softening
Then using a pointy xacto etc knife try to pull up the dust cover up without tearing the cone.

If it wont come up I very gingerly saw it apart next to the existing glue.
Worst come to worst make a new one from file folder cardboard sharpie coilured black.
But if arched, flat cover will not sound the same.

Once dust cover is off, take copy paper strip and coil it and trial fit it to fill the gap coil to inner magnet piece.
Two turns is sometimes needed.
Goal here is to keep this space centred while you are working on the foam.

Now coil is stabilized.
Pry paper/carboard ring that usually is over the outside edge of the dead foam.
I do this carefully and always aim to reuse this.

Now work to mechanically gently pull away last of dead foam surround. On the metal outer can scrape it away.
On the cone dabs of solvent and rub with fingers until faom turns to a wadded ball.
Repeat many times.
Yes you fingers get stained.

Once all foam crap is gone, lay down contact cement on mating surfaces and let it dry.
Set new foam centred as best you can.
I sometimes use wax paper slips to hold bits apart while I center them, then pull slip and push rim down one bit at a time.
Once rim is down slowly bit by bit alternating sides push new foam to cone.

Reglue paper surround back on
Remove paper shims and pray no scraping with new foam in place.
Glue down dust cap.
If sawed out, I tack it back with smoothed on black rubber gasket maker from CTC.

Clean your hands with solvent then use hand cream to put skin oils back you just disolved away..

When I pull the speaker to this fix the foam I usually look at the crossover and the size of bipolar capacitors.
They change value as they age.
So while things are apart solder new ones in if you have that skill.
This can brighten a dull tweater response.
 
Last edited:

curvluvr

Well-known member
Mar 28, 2017
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This is fascinating. I"ve built my own loudspeakers before, but never considered repairing or refurbishing a loudspeaker driver.
 

K Douglas

Half Man Half Amazing
Jan 5, 2005
29,578
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Room 112
I guess you might call me a less than pure audiophile. Way long post but stick with me tothe end.

I like building systems mostly from what I find on the curb or at garage sales. I think 70's and early 80's stuff tends to sound best to me.

System in the main floor office, with remote speakers in adjacent kitchen.
early 80's Realistic System 11 30W receiver. Some capacitors replaced.
2 sets of Minimum 7 acoustic suspension speakers.
Amp has a switch to optimize for these speakers. Direct drive turntable, CD player.

Main living room.
late '00s Yammy AV receiver. Unsure of watts. Enough. Nice direct drive turntable. HDMI audio from DVD player.
Infinity acoustic suspension speakers as the main 2. Nice planar tweeters. New caps in the cross overs.
Paradigm 2 way ported speakers as back pair. Minumis 7 as center.

Basement-
late '10s Denon AV receiver. Unsure of watts. Enough. Direct drive turntable. HDMI audio from DVD player.
Realistic speakers as the main 2. Mid 70's era. Heavy cases, dual bass drivers. Rebuilt crossover caps and new flex wire to the bass cones.
No glam Telefunken back pair on stands. No name 3 way center over TV screen.

Laundry room/darkroom
30W JVC receiver and a DVD player for playing CD's.
Driving a pair of Minimus 7 speakers.

Garage-
Luxman 40W receiver.
Speakers in garage, and second 60W PA amp that takes radio or bluetooth feed from receiver and feeds a 70V PA amp.
That drives 7 small full range ( as full range as a long throw 4" woofer gets) speakers set on 4' high posts around the patio.
So you can chill to tunes and not have to blast it and bug the neighbours.

Man cave mini house out beside hot tub:
Sansui 8080 receiver of mid 70's 80W per channel. Quite a bit recapped - still have to hunt down some distorting small old ones in the audio out of the tuner board.
Paradigm speakers
Direct drive turntable. Earliest DVD player released in NA used as CD player. It has a separate audio laser pickup for playing CD's . The DVD laser is failing but audio still sounds great.

Audio system for the hot tub.
30W PA amp driving 70V line for 2 sony speakers set either side of the hot tub.
The amp takes bluetooth input or a feed from the TV that lives behind a door that when openned makes viewing in the hot tub feasible.

I have a VHF tv antenna on the roof. This feeds quite few of the systems so great FM reception from heaps of GTA and Niagara and Buffalo stations.



I currently have an idle Denon AVR3600 av receiver I am about to discard.
It works fine, but AV video is all for SVideo.
Has digital audio input via optical or RF coax on RCA jack.
Used that to pull hi def audio from the modern TV it was last hooked to.
It has tuner, phono, a few tape/DAT tape loops for reel to reel connections etc.
Then I found the newer Denon for the basement system, spent $20 for an after market remote for it and this beast got retired..

It is an honest 5x90W of class B amps, with a beefy inear power supply.
It is late 90's and heavy
No oem remote, but a Harmony One universal remote is programmed to run it if you dont want to get off the couch to change the volume, etc. I will throw that in.

Needs SVideo hooked to monitor out to look at video menus it puts outs out to let you do setup calibration for 5.1 speakers, digital in options,. etc.
I have a small monitor to give away to do this if this is how you want to hook this up.

PM me if you want this for free to see what your room sounds like with 90W driving your speakers.

It can simulate room sounds, but nicely lets you bypass all of that and just drive it as stereo.
This is friggin' astounding. A sound system for almost every room in the house. Best receiver I ever owned was a Yamaha. Best mini bookshelf system I owned was a JVC.
 
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Ponderling

Lotsa things to think about
Jul 19, 2021
1,830
1,537
113
Mississauga
This is friggin' astounding. A sound system for almost every room in the house. Best receiver I ever owned was a Yamaha. Best mini bookshelf system I owned was a JVC.
When we have a social event with tunes playing, I fire up a pretty good quality FM transmitter I own connected to whereever I will be playing 'dj'.
Then have all the other receivers tuned to that little boxes' frequency. playing in their area, but not necessarily blasting.
The tricky part in the GTA is there are barely any idle frequencies that do not have adjacent channel interference.

And as a young adult I did dj at weddings, end of year sports banquets, company picnics, etc.
It is actually a job you have to hustle at to do well.

That all faded away, then about 10 years ago we invited a ton of pals over to a dancing party.
Bring all you fave 45's.

That night was a ton of work for me, even with 2 tape decks queued up and two turntables connected to the mixer.
What you dont recall is a lot of the fave songs of our pasts, what bopped out of am radios, were rarely longer than 2.5 minutes long

It was a big hit of an event.
And a lot of sore long out of use muscles talking to you as you got out of bed the next morning for may of us too.

It was a talked about event for quite a few years though.
 
Ashley Madison
Toronto Escorts