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Music Media Hardware

Repairing Speaker Foam Surrounds? 57

Posted by Cliff from the if-it's-broke-fix-it dept.
bigmush asks: "I have an old pair of speakers, and they had been working fine until recently. I took off the covers, and saw that the foam surround had started to wear out on both of the woofers. After 15 years of service, this was a sad discovery (though also an opportunity to justify an upgrade!). I found a few foam surround repair kits available online. How well do these work? What experiences have you had with them?"
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Repairing Speaker Foam Surrounds? More

Repairing Speaker Foam Surrounds?

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  • Not so good (Score:5, Informative)

    by deque_alpha ( 257777 ) <qhartman AT gmail DOT com> on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:54PM (#8163984) Journal
    I haven't used the specific ones you found, but tried a very similar product for repairing a set of tried and true loudspeakers I used to own that suffered a similar failure. Bottom line, don't waste your time, just get some new speakers. It seemed to work well enough at first, but after only a few months of my listening habits, they were shot again. But as usual, YMMV.

    • Re:Not so good (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WildFire42 ( 262051 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @08:23PM (#8164855) Homepage
      It seemed to work well enough at first, but after only a few months of my listening habits, they were shot again. But as usual, YMMV.

      This depends. If you get a high quality repair kit, one with good adhesive and high quality foam, you might have better results. It's tedious, difficult work, and requires a steady hand. You have to get everything just so, or else it will lose it's seal after a while and the thing will disintegrate again.

      I've had to do this before. Not just wanted to, but had to. On a 2K Watt Yamaha S215IV Full range [yamaha.com]. One of the woofers had gone out, and replacements weren't exactly in my budget (I actually didn't have one).

      I won't debate the performance of a Yamaha speaker in a Sound Reinforcement environment (I'm not a fan of Yamaha, especially their mixers), but these weren't too bad. However, it wasn't my choice to buy them, and if I'd had my way, I'd have just bought new ones as well.

      For a professional environment, when a brand new replacement driver can be >$400 (and that's just a driver, not a full box), sometimes repairing the cone can be the way to go.

      But, on the other hand, you have something to be thankful for. You think cone repair is tedious and annoying? Just be thankful you don't have to repair a voice coil [google.com]. It's actually not too difficult to wrap the coil (some kits out there have pre-wrapped and even special tools for wrapping coils easily and quickly), but trying to scrape melted copper off of a heavily overdriven and not very well cooled driver will make you wonder why you ever went into technical audio.

      • Re:Not so good (Score:3, Interesting)

        by unitron ( 5733 )
        A few months ago I got drafted to volunteer to run sound temporarily for the contemporary service at church. It quickly changed from a one hour a week gig to a one man department, but one pleasant surprise was a pair of Peavey speakers that were designed to be repaired. The tweeters in both had open coils, just ordered new ones and swapped them out with nothing but a nut driver. Fixed one of the woofers just by loosening the hold down bolts and re-centering the coil. They may not be the best sounding sp
  • 1) Even if the repair did work, your speakers would sound slightly differant, as adding new foam would re-shape the cone.
    2) From my experience these things rarely work. Just look at these kinds of things like me, you know have a wonderful excuse to justify the expense to your g/f :-D

    • Re:Couple of things (Score:2, Informative)

      by TXG1112 ( 456055 )
      I used a kit such as these about 10 years ago on a set of old JBLs and even now they still work great.

      I should hope that the speakers sound different, as speakers with busted up surrounds sound like crap. As for whether they sound the same as when they were new, that's a different story.

      At the time it was worth it for me as I didn't have enough money to replace the speakers, as always YMMV.

    • Duct Tape (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      get with the program and use duct tape.

  • Don't Bother... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:01PM (#8164046) Journal
    ...unless you just want the experience if diddling with them. I used to order repeair kits for people with old JBL monitors and original Advents and such. Very few were successful and of those that were, fewer were satisfied. I started selling a full line of individual replacement speakers instead. Far more were satisfied.

    If your surrounds are worn out, chances are your speakers are so old that significant advances in speaker technology would get you better speakers for less money.

    • If your surrounds are worn out, chances are your speakers are so old that significant advances in speaker technology would get you better speakers for less money.

      Heh... That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. And I used to work in pro audio. And a lot of that time was spent doing broadcasting and simultaneous interpretation of Canadian federal government meetings. Yours was worthy of an ambassadorship to Portugal, at the very least.

      Yes, speaker technology has come a *long* way over the years.

  • I call this the Fun/Pain Ratio (Score:5, Informative)

    by Neck_of_the_Woods ( 305788 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:04PM (#8164077) Journal
    This is a Ratio of what I get out of something as to what I put into it.

    Your fun would be that you have your speakers back, you have spent a couple of bucks on it to bring back to life old ass speakers.

    Fun = 5 on a scale of 1 to 10

    Pain, is you have to do it. It might not come out as planned. You have old ass speakers you have now sunk more money into.

    Pain in your ass = 6

    If your p > f just buck up and do what is more fun. IE- buy some new speakers.

    In this case if you don't have the money, and it would cause you to not eat for a week. Well then the F/P Raito is scewed.

    Your fun just went up, it is always fun to eat.

    F = 6
    P = 5

    f > P = Fix the damn things, food is more important.

    Figure out what your f/p ratio is. This is a life lesson. The f/p ratio is what keeps me sane.

    Just recently I had a f/p ratio for going surfing.

    3 foot, semi glassy surf. Fun = 7

    58f water temp, cloudy, hole in wetsuit. Pain = 7.5

    Had I been 23 again, the pain raito would have been about 5.5. Thus I would have hit the waves, as it is now...screw it. I am going to get a game of WarcraftIII in with beer and wait for the florida sun to heat up the water a bit.

    Live by the f/p ratio!

  • Surround repair kits are cheap and work very well. (Score:3, Informative)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:07PM (#8164098) Homepage Journal
    Surround repair kits are cheap and work very well. If the drivers are generic junk, then it might not be worth the effort, unless you're really poor. If the drivers are good, like Bose or something, then it's definately worth it.
    • Oh yeah and next time, buy drivers with rubber surrounds.
      • Oh yeah and next time, buy drivers with rubber surrounds.

        Actually, that depends on who you talk to. Foam tends to have a much better response, but rubber is much more durable. There are pros and cons to each. Foam won't decrease the "punch" a driver has, as it's good to have a relatively flexible edge. Of course, if the speaker needs to be rugged (for instance, if you're in outdoor, dirty/dusty, or travelling environments), or you're not in a professional environment, rubber surrounds are the way to go.

        B
      • Generally the surround material is determined by the enclosure design. Sealed boxes (known as "acoustic suspension" about 30 years ago) usually call for the "floppier" foam surrounds as the air pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the box is part of the speaker's suspension that restores it to the rest position when the voltage across the terminals goes back to zero, whereas the stiffer surrounds are more often used in non-sealed boxes, such as open back guitar amp cabinets and "bass
    • \I have not used the kits myself, but the reports from a long time shop partner on the ones he has used were very positive. \Don't let the SAY-NO-TO-EVERYTHING types scare you off with their pesimism. I have done between 15-20 repairs where no kit was available using nylon mesh cloth saturated with 3M \Black \Weather stripping \Cement thinned with \Acetone and gotten results which ranged from at least fair to a couple that were amazingly fine!\
      • I have done between 15-20 repairs where no kit was available using nylon mesh cloth saturated with 3M Black Weather stripping Cement thinned with Acetone

        I've done several repairs with kits, but none that were "ad-hoc", so to speak, and I dreaded the thought of even using a kit, not to mention making my own surround. You poor, poor bastard.

        I salute you!!!
    • If the drivers are good, like Bose

      Bose has some of the crappiest drivers around actually. The magic is in their ability to make speakers that sound as good as they do (not bad at all), then charge half again what another brand delivering the same sound quality would cost.

      I'm not a pro sound engineer or anything, but from what I understand re-surrounding a Bose driver is likely to shift the driver parameters and break the magic. You are better off getting an approved replacement driver from the factory.

  • There are a few thing to consider... (Score:4, Informative)

    by drakaan ( 688386 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:18PM (#8164216) Homepage Journal
    A speaker's sound reproduction characteristics are defined by the motor strength (magnet), compliance (bounciness of the surround and spider), and moving mass. Change one of these things, and you've just changed the overall compliance of the speaker (the "Q", in audiophile-speak). If you change the "Q" for high-frequency and midrange drivers, the effects may be minimal, because drastically changing their "Q" is more difficult". Low frequency drivers are another matter, and a great deal of design work goes into pairing the driver, enclosure, and port length to get a particular response curve. If you can find out from the manufacturer whether the surrounds will work well, you might be able to keep the speakers around for a while, and have them sound as good as new...otherwise, it's a crap shoot. Also remember that you're going to need a fairly robust adhesive to make the things stick for more than 20 minutes, and speaker basket and cone sizes can vary widely for "standard" sizes...especially for major name brand manufacturers. Overall, it's probably going to be best for you to retire you 15-year-old gear, and start shopping for a new pair that will last that long, but it wouldn't hurt to try to fix your current ones while you look.

  • No luck here (Score:3, Funny)

    by Deanasc ( 201050 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:36PM (#8164408) Homepage Journal
    I had no luck trying to fix a pair of speakers a couple years ago. Admittedly I wasn't using a foam repair kit but Duct Tape instead. I guess there is in fact at least one thing that Duct Tape is no good at fixing.

    • Re:No luck here (Score:4, Funny)

      by h2odragon ( 6908 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @10:51PM (#8165916) Homepage
      ahh, but you weren't using $800/roll, audiophile duct tape, now were you.

      • Re:No luck here (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Wow, is that the gold-laminated tape where the adhesive molecules are all aligned in one direction?
        I've heard that that stuff rocks for audio repair work..
        • Wow, is that the gold-laminated tape where the adhesive molecules are all aligned in one direction?

          No, it's the regular grey tape with the word "MONSTER" stamped in gold on it.

    • You didn't use enough tape then!

      In college, back in 90-94, we used duct tape on the "subs", which where just some old ported speakers with the high end burned out. They were over driven so badly, that the tape didn't effect the sound quality at all; it just kept junk out of the enclosures.

      I beleive they eventually caught fire at my brother's house when he drove them with 200W+.

      Joe

  • Simply Speakers (Score:3, Informative)

    by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdot@ ... inus threevowels> on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:48PM (#8164520)
    simplyspeakers.com has great product and reasonable prices. I ordered from them a couple of times and service has always been excellent.

    Of course, this all makes sense only if the speakers were actually high quality in the first place. If they use cheap generic drivers, you might want to just replace the drivers entirely. Of course, you have to be careful to not ruin the voicing of the speaker.
  • as suggested in another comment, contact the manufacturer of the speakers and see if they 1) still exit , 2) offer a repair service. If you've enjoyed them that much for so long it might very well be worth it to send them for repair. obviously out of warrenty, but if its just the surround they might charge to much.
  • I own a set of 15 year old Mission speakers. Damn nice sounding they are too. One of the drivers got damaged when a friend drunkenly fell into it.
    Rather than mess about trying to repair it myself I posted the driver off to Mission to see what they could do. Unfortunately for me, they couldn't recone it but they could supply me with an equivelant replacement driver.

    60 later and I'd repaired the speaker. Hopefully I'll get another 15 years out of them. :)

    Many decent speaker manufacturers offer a recone ser

  • Parts Express (Score:2, Informative)

    by slandis ( 97422 )

    Try these guys out: PE [partsexpress.com]

    You can find foam surround replacement kits, or you can search for some drivers that fit specific parameters to replace your bad ones. Either way, I'm sure you'll find something in a decent price range.

  • Refoaming Services (Score:4, Informative)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @08:31PM (#8164930)

    In many cases there are other issues with the speaker as well that make it worthwhile to have the speaker looked at by somebody with experience at this sort of thing.

    I have dealt with these guys with a great deal of success.

    http://layneaudio.hypermart.net/repair.htm

    Not cheap, but if you have good speakers they are usually worth repairing. The owner is a real geek about this sort of stuff too, so you are getting somebody who has some real knowledge.

  • Since most people posting in this topic seem somewhat knowledgable about speakers, I was wondering if anyone had any experience building their own speakers? I'm taking a class in acoustics where we are building our own speakers from kits, but the instructor left us to find our own kit system to build. I'm looking to build two stereo speakers and a sub, just the drivers, I'll be building my own box and crossover. Any suggestions in the fairly cheapo range ($250 would be great) would be appreciated.
    • Kits?? Back in my day we got the specs for the driver, broke out the slide rule, jigsaw, sheet or two of medium density particleboard and made our own speakers.

      Kids these days...

      With the invention of the Intarweb Thingy, I've since retired my slide rule and entrusted my calculations to various [rockfordfosgate.com] online [the12volt.com] resources [mfr-eng.com].

  • I fixed some ancient Epicure speakers around 4 years back and haven't had any problems with moderate listening levels for many hours a day, and dozens of hours at peak volumes.

    Just take your time, work slowly and carefully.
  • But you may want to look around for a place tat does speaker repair so you can get a pro job done, our local (milwaukee) place is thunderhead reconing, but it seems they dont have a website. Failing that it may just be time to get new speakers.
  • Tried it and failed. Actually did pretty well on one speaker - but the other wasn't centered well enough and still rattled after the repair. Bought a pair of Axiom's and am enjoying them thoroughly.

  • Ya, it works (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BillX ( 307153 )
    This summer I came into possession of a big old pair of 15" Scotts whose foam had substantially rotted away. While I had seen refoam kits on the internet, I always though to myself, "could that really work?", and kind of doubted it. Since I was unemployed and brokish at the time, I didn't want to blow cash on an unproven technology (internet refoam kits) and had entirely too much free time. So I decided I would spend an afternoon performing a "ghetto refoam" with silicon sealant and dryer sheets(!) to see i
  • Certainly not a solution for the audiophile, and probably not what you're looking for, but I sucessfully repaired an old speaker's surround foam by carefully laying small strips of duct tape around the border. I was careful to leave enough slack so the speaker could travel in a similar fashion. It actually worked pretty well, and I continued to use the speaker for several more years until I had money for something respectable :)

    YMMV.
  • I called two high end audio stores. They had a intown guy that does it. Cost me 30 bucks to fix my dryed out infinities. Saved me 300 bucks. Try calling some of the high end speaker store in town and see if they know an intown repair guy.
  • I re-foamed a set of Boston Acoustics 741s (car speakers) about ten years ago. The replacement foam is still good today.

    This is though ten years of Iowa summers and winters (range +105F to -20F), lots of thumping bass, two different vehicles, never garaged. They still sound excellent

    If I remembered where I purchased the kit from I 'd post it, it came from an ad in the back of Stereo Review (Now known as Sound and Vision)

    I'd advise attempting this only if you have steady hands. The supplied adhesive is

  • Anyone have recommendations of which kit to buy?

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