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Repairing Speaker Foam Surrounds?
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?"
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.
1) Even if the repair did work, your speakers would sound slightly differant, as adding new foam would re-shape the cone. :-D
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
...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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
A decent pair of speakers can really live this long and keep being great. A quality stereo pair bought 15 years ago will still whoop any standard 5.1 or 6.1 system of today thrown at them (I have a SoA and Thoebe pumping out quality through 15 year old speaskers right now).
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.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
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!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
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.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
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.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Oh yeah and next time, buy drivers with rubber surrounds.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
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.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Just my 2c.
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
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.
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 service. If not they'll more than likely offer a replacement driver. Give it a shot!
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.
But it all depends on the application.
Try these guys out: PE
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.
BAM!
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!!!
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.
Even today Accoustic Research 3a's are used as reference speakers. Yamaha NS1000's are used for critical monitoring. Who would stick a substandard consumer driver into a pro cabinet? The driver is matched for the crossover. Using a substitute of differing coupling, suspension, and/or weight can mess up the system response and create resonances that didn't exist before. A sub is probably OK for your home theatre, but for studio critical monitoring, accept no substitutes. Your quality product depends on it.
Here is what Stereo Review has to say about both of them. See items 97 and 91. They are the ones I have.
http://www.stereophile.com/features/709/
Compare the graphs with anything BOSE. I'll tell you which one can create a better image of the original environment.
For my old 3a's, I do have the foam edge problem. I bought them used in 1978. Because they are acoustic suspension (very loose long throw) they are worth the money to find a shop that can do a good job re-coneing them. It's hard to replace the foam because of the damage removing it and the added weight of old + new glue. A good shop can re-cone them for about $40 each. I found a shop in Portland OR that does a great job.
The NS1000's are now going on 24 years old (bought in 1980) without any problems of any kind. There isn't much stuff out there that reliable to run problem free for 20+ years without a glitch. When they have a problem, I'll probably have them repaired instead of replaced as there isn't much on the market that has that quality, relibility and longevity. I've has other speakers fall apart in less than 1/3rd the time. Don't think they lasted this long just because I baby them. I don't.
It's sad when cheap speakers fall apart after only 10-15 years or less.
The truth shall set you free!
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 if this home refoaming thing was actually feasible before plunking down for an actual kit.
The ghetto refoam was easy. Dryer sheets (brand unknown) were selected due to their strength, flexibility and lack of sound/noise when flexed. Cut into rounded strips matching the contour of the original foam, but a little wider; slather the strips with silicone-rubber sealant that maintains flexibility when cured; layer to suit taste (2 layers seemed like a good enough guess of the original foam's rigidity), and form around whatever's handy to match the diameter of the speaker (bucket top, coiled hose, etc.)
Once the silicone rubber had cured, it was an easy matter to arrange the pieces in place of the original foam and sort of splice them together, at this point following the normal procedures for refoaming (e.g. shimming the voice coil with whatever works, e.g. strips of Dixie cup, gluing on the new "foam", etc.).
Much to my surprise, this actually worked! It worked so well, in fact, that I just left the ghetto-foam on as a semi-permanent repair. The Scotts shake the entire neighborhood without any noticable distortion. I am amazed.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
For the speaker or the Girl friend?
We don't need no stinking sig!