Slashdot Mirror
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.
...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
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
I totally agree. Speaker technology has seen little innovation in recent decades (finer points have been improved, but no 'breakthrough'), the 5.1 and 6.1 extensions are jokes, OK for games they are good but any 5/6.1 system is crap at music/DVD for your $, better spend hard earned dollars on good quality stereo speakers that _really_ do sound like gold.
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
audiocircle or
TNT
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
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.
ahh, but you weren't using $800/roll, audiophile duct tape, now were you.