Speaker Repair

I do, on rare occasion.

You presumably have conventional dynamic speakers. It's unlikely any of them could stand up to current models in terms of sound quality. (There are exceptions.)

The fact that these speakers are "blown out" is suspicious. Speakers are almost always blown out by gross abuse; it doesn't "just happen". As a "classical snob" listener, I'm tempted to believe you don't deserve to own good speakers, because you just crank up the volume without regard for whether you're driving the speakers into distortion, a small step away from damaging them.

Before repairing or replacing these speakers, you should find out /why/ you're abusing them.

WHAT!

Bobby, If your attic is anything like mine with regard to temperature and humidity control, hitting extremes in both parameters, I would caution you to look carefully at the outcome of storage. You may find that new issues now exist which did not arise until heat, cold, dust, etc. have destroyed other elements of the speaker. The adhesives, rubber, surrounds, electrolytics, cones, etc. can get irreversibly damaged after a stay in harsh conditions.

Smarty

Hi, El Cheapo amps blow speakers more. MY HT is 7.1 all Paradigm speakers driven by Anthem MRX700.

Absolutely valid points. But he said these speakers were blown out before being put in storage.

Yes, and I added that attic storage can further contribute new and unexpected issues. Expecting a speaker which was 'blown out' with a fried voice coil on the woofer may surprisingly reveal, after storage, an inoperative tweeter, damaged by attic heat.

My point in posting this caveat was to caution the original poster that the condition of the speaker when it was put into attic storage may not reflect the current status due to the attic environment itself.

Depends. Were these $500+/each audiopile speakers when new? If so, it might be worth it. Did they come as a set with a $150 stereo system? Maybe not worth it. In between... you have to decide.

You can get replacement drivers in various sizes and power handling levels. You can probably get something "close"; whether that's good enough for you is up to your ears.

The voice coil is more likely to be open. Sometimes you get lucky and it's something easy, like the wire to the connectors/terminals on the back panel has broken, or a push-on connector has fallen off.

For higher-end ($$$) speakers, if you can't get exact replacements, you can probably get parts that have been tested to work well in that particular model. For cheap speakers, you try it and see.

They can.

Yes. You can see if the inductors (coils) are open circuit, and you can check the capacitors for open or short circuits. You most likely will need to unsolder at least one end of each component to make the test.

It might be faster to note how the wires go, disconnect the crossovers, and apply audio to each speaker driver directly. If you get sound, then put the crossover back in line and run audio through it. If the sound goes away or becomes hideously bad, then the crossover network is broken.

A real newsreader will allow you to set the Followup-To: header as you desire. (Outhouse Depressed is not a real newsreader.)

Matt Roberds

If this was a UK loft then you've increased the probability of adding bits of iron-corrossion product , now trapped by the magnet , in the VC gap , to give that classic scratchy sound, as well as the original failure

If you're blowing out speakers with that regularity I expect a sever miss math in equipment. The second would be a recommendation to have your hearing check as you may have damaged/serious loss of hearing.

All my kids were big into music. I made sure they wore ear protection at concerts and especially when they were performing. Unlike me (too many years near jet engines) they can still hear a pin drop.

Those are good points. It's not too bad up there, but there is a good possibility that there's heat or aging damage and replacing a bad tweeter or midrange would just be followed up by the failure of a woofer after the repaired speaker has been run for a while.

Thanks for your input!

It's a fairly high humidity Washington DC attic.

I didn't know that ferrous debris in the VC gap was an issue. I thought the scratchy sound came from the voice coil detaching from the paper/plastic cone.

Thanks for your input!

I didn't know that ferrous debris in the VC gap was an issue. I thought the scratchy sound came from the voice coil detaching from the paper/plastic c one. Thanks for your input! -- Bobby G.

The scrqatchy sound can come from either problem. I have seen corrosion de velope on the internal magnet as well as the frame. Essentially this will wear on the coil and cause the speaker to fail completely. Having reconed speakers for many years, I would typically clean the gap and check for any debris. Usually there is not too much unless the unit has been stored in a damp area for a long time. Once cleaned and rebuilt, the speaker is back to normal. (assuming that the correct coil, cone and spider is used.)

Dan

I don't know the correct names for speaker bits - but if the cone has been over extended to the flexible webbing that supports the cone around the speech coil has torn, there could be all kinds of crap settled in the gap between the magnet poles.

A tiny minority refurbish their own speakers, a not much bigger minority take them to specialist rebuilders - either way is unlikely to be cheaper than buying new ones.

Its when you can't hear a speaker cone hit the opposite wall you need to worry!

Sometimes attics are like purgatory. You put things up there that you don't have the heart to throw away at the time. The books died a slow death up there, making it easy to decide to recycle them as waste. No library would want them. It was very easy to see which publishers used cheap paper and which didn't. Some pages just crumbled when turned.

The speakers that served as spacing blocks for the shelves will probably soon follow the books. I connected one up that had a scratchy midrange and watched the woofer speaker cone just shred at tje edges after just a few seconds of operation. Ironically, that same fate befell a speaker stored under much better conditions. Time seems to be a serious enemy of the speaker as much as sub-optimal storage conditions.

I have to admit that on occasion, the attic has "healed" things that were previously non-functional. Certainly not as often as it hastened their doom, but often enough to encourage a temporary retirement to the attic before heading out to feed the curb monster.

Some allegedly high quality speakers have some sort of flexible foam rubber as the suspension round the outside of the cone - it usually perishes sooner rather than later.

Foam has largely been abandoned because it eventually self-destructs. It isn't rubber, it's a synthetic polymer.

I have a pair of original Advents (final green-tweeter iteration), with foam surrounds in perfect condition. Why, I don't know.

Nothing allegedly about it. I have a pair of Infinity speakers (~ 30 yrs old now) and had to replace the surrounds on several of the speakers a year or so back. Foam becomes brittle (age? atmosphere? dog farts? sun/ambient light?) and just starts to disintegrate.

Fortunately, found an outfit on line that sells kits for DIY repair. Figured that I had nothing to lose I popped for the kits and repair was a piece of cake. All's well and I'm good for another 30 years (well, not me, but the speakers)