Repairing an expensive speaker

I would contact Annoy and ask exactly which adhesive it uses. Don't substitute on the assumption that your choice would be superior to Annoy's.

To add to my other post, if he wants orginal, then stay orginal. Also both units should be the identical.

greg

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center the cone. Then you glue new flex material around the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it only took me about half an hour the first time. With practice I might be able to get it down to

10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

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The 10 minute recone part really bothers me. Sure with production line jigs, shims, guides and people who do maybe a 100 per day that is a tangible goal. But for an average Joe buying reconing parts and being successful is not the average outcome. Sure there are exceptions so if you want to try it on your own good luck.

Interestingly, I was discussing exactly this issue with the owner of the music shop that I do a lot of work for, just this week. He rents a lot of biiiiigggg PA equipment out - kilowatt amps and 4 x 15 bass cabs and such. These get damaged by inept users all the time, apparently. I suggested that it must cost him a fortune in replacement speakers, but he said "Oh no - I just re-cone them". I asked him how long he had been doing this and he said years, but I had never seen this going on in his shop. Anyway, I asked him how long it took, and how hard a job it was, and did he have lots of specialist shims and feeler gauges and jigs and what have you. Nope, he said. He reckons it takes him but a few minutes (literally) to do the job. He says that the most time consuming part is making sure that all the crud from the burnt up voice coil, is removed from the airgap. He uses a combination of compressed air, and sticky tape to do this. As to centering the new cone's voice coil, he says that most replacement kits come with a set of four plastic spacer shims, but that many modern designs are fundamentally self - centering anyway. He reckoned that it was basically a piece of piss job that just needed a little care, and that much bollocks was talked on the subject. I might ask him to let me know next time he's got one to do, as I would like to watch him at work ...

Arfa

A little OT...

Took me some hours to resolder bad joint between cone wire and the flex wire, by the time I found and arranged some foam rubber to lift the cone outwards enough to gain access, clean off some of the black insulator stuff very carefully to find the wires underneath and the bad solder joint. The speakers date back about 30 years.

Then many attempts to get a good solder joint, the low-mid 7" speaker has very fine wire to the cone. But the repair done with much patience, and has lasted a few years now :)

It's worth the effort to try repair expensive speaker drivers, at worst, you're still stuck with a bad speaker needing replacement. Nothing but time to lose?

Grant.

Not at all, the voice coil, spider, and the cone itself are not affected. Sorry if I missed something in the original post.

>

But the question /has/ been answered -- contact the manufacturer and ask it what the appropriate adhesive is.

You want us to give you the answer you'd like to have -- and I, for one, am not going to do it. The manufacturer should know best.

I've been around when my buddy Bart reconed some pro-audio speakers. It all comes down to people doing it the way they have learned. It's not as easy as you think but it isn't hard either. He chose to buy specific tools and glues and treatments not relying on kits for shims and glues. He knew what he was doing and reconed all my speakers. Never had a re-run because of a botched repair. Hey if you can learn the essentials and want to give reconing a try go for it. Maybe it's for you maybe it's not.

I don't reckon I've got the patience, Meat. I had always thought that it was quite a tricky and skilled job, so I was just interested to have a watch next time Dunc does one, as he reckoned it was so straightforward !

Arfa

That was the first thing I did and the answer from Tannoy was:

"We don't have the kit but you may get it from company x. Then send the complete assembly to the closest Tannoy service center (200 miles from my residence) and we will do the reconing. We don't recommend changing the coil."

The installation of the kit is easy. It is self center and it doesn't have play adjustments.

In order to do a god job, I should order 2 cone kits from England but the total cost including transportation, duty an taxes will be more than $1k.

The speaker with less damage has about 6 turns dislocated as a group from the rest of the coil that looks solid. I am going to read again your recommendations about the glue, paint the 2" tube with that glue and slide the 6 turns group into their previous position.

If this works I may try to rewind the other coil "fat chance"

Then I may order one or two kits from England and do the reconing myself.

Thanks for all your help.

John

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Reading through this I see no ref to 3 or 4 slices of credit card to align voice coil with the slot, maybe an omission or another reconing job I'm remembering

This is my experience of reconing a Peavey Black Widow speaker Not made for the UK climate, stored in a (normal for UK) damp garage for 3 years, came out making nasty "amp clipping" noise. I don't know how general this is for different manufacturers but for unsticking the contact adhesive of the original cone and spider skirt. I tried hot-air gun , oven cleaner and acetone but the one that worked on the one I did this week was petrol. Some strips of tissue paper soaked in petrol and covered with some circular strips of plastic and leaving for half an hour to soften the glue Now it is totally apart, small bits of aluminium oxide in the voice coil slot were causing the distortion along with loose skirt biased to one still retained side. 15 inch size with aluminium basket. The voice coil is in perfect condition and no imperfections to the cone despite 30 years old. Prior to me getting to look the owner had removed the 3 magnet retaining bolts and removed some perished foam filter from inside under the mesh cover and squirted in WD40. The white oxide formations had burst the glued skirt off , about 80 percent of its rim, and the same for the cone rim (after removing the periphery bolts) and nothing much holding on the remainder, easy to prize off. masked off the central voice coil slot area before abraiding back the lands to take contact adhesive to replace the skirt and cone. Then air blast and run thick plastic around the slot to clear any crud. The magnet does not seem to be corroded, shiney, no obvious rust spots. The 0.08mm thick aluminium dome must have been press-formed or by metal spinning with a cylinder extension to the dome and the cylinder section is glued to the inside of the VC former. So had to cut around the dome to remove and hope the final gluing-back holds up against the air pumping process. I just used 4 ball point pens in the rim mount holes for rough alignment and some clothes pegs to give a bit more clearance gap for laying down the glue. Removed them prior to dropping the cone in case they gave some bias.

FYI.....

HI Tom, We only recone with authentic Tannoy parts returning the speaker to exact new condition. I haven't priced this kit recently, but about one year ago, charges for us to recone the low frequency were $440.00 each. I can check the price on Monday to make sure there haven't been any major changes, but generally there are only a few dollar differences or none at all. The more important question will be availability and if you are interested, I will pursue that too. I'm glad you saw our Over the Tannoy Post. What did you think of it? the website? Cathy Satin The Speaker Exchange=AE

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Some one made some reference to the use WD40 to melt the glue

I had an interesting experience with that powerful staff: The spring load cover of an outdoor power outlet that I have, made a screeching noise when lifted. I sprayed it with WD40 and the cover toke off like an Arab rocket. Einstein once defined a stupid person the one who does the same thing and expects a different result so I did the stupid thing of installing a new cover and spray again with WD40 and obviously the result was the same. Installed another cover and no more spraying. The nasty WD40 melted the plastic holding the spring.

Ref: Material to hold the coil in position : I used, 65 years ago, strips of plastic from photographic film negatives. Boston Acoustics sells a speaker with a removable voice coil and attached to the cone by screws. There is a metal ring with threaded holes glued to the cone.

Thank you to everybody . Fantastic help

John

>

Some one made some reference to the use WD40 to melt the glue

I had an interesting experience with that powerful staff: The spring load cover of an outdoor power outlet that I have, made a screeching noise when lifted. I sprayed it with WD40 and the cover toke off like an Arab rocket. Einstein once defined a stupid person the one who does the same thing and expects a different result so I did the stupid thing of installing a new cover and spray again with WD40 and obviously the result was the same. Installed another cover and no more spraying. The nasty WD40 melted the plastic holding the spring.

Ref: Material to hold the coil in position : I used, 65 years ago, strips of plastic from photographic film negatives. Boston Acoustics sells a speaker with a removable voice coil and attached to the cone by screws. There is a metal ring with threaded holes glued to the cone.

Thank you to everybody . Fantastic help

John

>

I noticed Parts Express also does reconing. Pretty cheap.

greg

:I am repairing two 15" Tannoys of the Gold series. A $5k unit if we :could get them. : :Un oscillation in a cassette deck I was using, produced a very lowed :sound that damaged the speakers. : :One of them has 6 turns of the voice coil, lose and can be glued back. : :On the old days I used to repair speakers using the same type of glue :that was used on the assembling of models. A type of glue that use :acetone as a solvent. :Today we have better types of glue like epoxy and I believe the harder :the glue the better the performance, the disadvantage is that using :epoxy will make a future repair very difficult. : :Any suggestions ? : :The coil on the second speaker is open and in very bad shape. I am :looking for a replacement. : :Tannoy does not carry parts for this type of speaker but there is a :place in England that will sell me a cone assembly for about $300 usd.

Are these the speakers?

If so then they should be fairly easily repaired. A good repair shop will remove the surround and the spider (probably with acetone) and they can re-attach the winding or rewind if necessary.

Where I am in the most remote capital in the world we have a repair shop who could do it

He is frequently asked to perform this type of repair on Altec, Goodmans, Wharfedale etc.