Repairing Speaker Foam Surrounds? 57
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?"
|=1R5+ P()5T (Score:1)
That's cool.
Not so good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not so good (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
No way! (Score:3, Informative)
I don't recommend new foam in itself, but if the shell/stand of your speaker is still good you can replace the whole 'insides' at a reasonable cost and keep what makes your speaker more than good.
Re:No way! (Score:4, Informative)
OK, was making a break for OT but restrained myself. Foam sucks. If you are passinate about your speakers/sound, I recommend you check out these groups:
audio asylum [audioasylum.com]
audiocircle [audiocircle.com] or
TNT [tnt-audio.com]
Re:No way! (Score:1)
Re:15 years old? (Score:3, Interesting)
Couple of things (Score:2, Funny)
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
Re:Couple of things (Score:2, Informative)
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)
Re:Duct Tape (Score:2, Funny)
Don't Bother... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
How to decide if you should replace your surrounds (Score:2)
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)
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!
Re:I call this the Fun/Pain Ratio (Score:1)
Surround repair kits are cheap and work very well. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surround repair kits are cheap and work very we (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surround repair kits are cheap and work very we (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:Surround repair kits are cheap and work very we (Score:2)
Re:Surround repair kits are cheap and work very we (Score:1)
Re:Surround repair kits are cheap and work very we (Score:2, Funny)
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!!!
Re:Surround repair kits are cheap and work very we (Score:2)
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.
Damnit! (Score:2)
Just my 2c.
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:1)
How about PNGs for video monitors? (Score:1)
Let's stick with statistics like frequency response graphs.
There are a few thing to consider... (Score:4, Informative)
No luck here (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No luck here (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No luck here (Score:2, Funny)
I've heard that that stuff rocks for audio repair work..
Re:No luck here (Score:1)
No, it's the regular grey tape with the word "MONSTER" stamped in gold on it.
Re:No luck here (Score:2)
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)
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.
what about the manu? (Score:1)
Just buy new complete new drivers. (Score:2, Informative)
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)
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)
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.
Slightly Off Topic (Score:1)
Re:Slightly Off Topic (Score:2)
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].
parts express on ancient Epicure speakers (Score:2)
Just take your time, work slowly and carefully.
Never used a kit... (Score:2)
Don't bother... (Score:1)
Re:Don't bother... (Score:1)
Ya, it works (Score:2, Interesting)
Duct Tape! (Score:2)
YMMV.
I had simular problem (Score:1)
Successful Foam Repair (Score:1)
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
Bose 802 refoam kits? (Score:1)