A friend of mine was given an old pair of Acoustic Research TSW-510s and the woofers and mid range units all required new surrounds as well as new caps in the crossover network boards. I'm pleased to report that they're performing really well now.
Hello Paul I am from Hong Kong I bought a Heresy almost 40 years old speakers I changed the caps reconed the woofers you are right they sound Super fantastic!
I have a pair of ADC 450As circa 1973 with blown tweeters. Fortunately, I have original literature showing the frequency response. I was able to source some new tweeters with very similar characteristics. I had to fabricate adapters to secure the new round tweeters in the original rectangular holes (large ceramic magnets). I replaced the surrounds on the woofers. The crossovers were semi-potted in a tar-like material, so were difficult to rebuild. Finally, I oiled the walnut enclosures. All-in-all, it was a fun project for a second system for my office.
I purchased a pair of AR-3a speakers in late 1970. The foam surrounds lasted about 12 years (1983) and began to disintegrate. I had the surrounds replaced. In the late 90s I had to replace them again. So far they are holding up currently. I also have a pair of AR-3 speakers that have a type of cloth surrounds. I was given them used when a local audio repair shop closed. These had to be originally from the late fifties or early sixties. There have been no problems with them. I lived in Memphis, TN and later West Palm Beach, FL. I did a service call for a friend of a friend that had a system that featured four JBL Century L-100s. The complaint was that he couldn't balance the system. This guy really liked his music loud. His listening couch was closer to the left front speaker by several feet from the other speakers. He was putting his signal through a tape recorder pre-amp and feeding that into his audio amp including another pre-amp. I found that the mid-range and tweeters were blown on all three of the speakers that were farther away. I put my oscilloscope on the speaker inputs and found there was serious clipping on all three of these speakers. Mid-range and especially tweeters are easily damaged by clipped wave forms. What happens is the voice coils overheat and open. I explained to him why he should not run the signal through two pre-amplifiers and should equalize his distance to all four speakers if possible. You are correct that tweeter do very well if you do not abuse them.
My Cerwin Vega E-315s that I bought in 97 in California went dry and disintegrated after 5 years in Okinawa then 3 years in San Diego. Here near Nagoya, Japan now. I replaced the surround foam a few years ago myself and they sound like new again! It's not hard if you love your speakers! I highly agree with you, Paul!
Here is an old Marine trick straight out of the field manual. Use an old green utility t-shirt (usmc), cut a circle, use Walmart or your local px tac glue. There, perfect surrounds will last forever. It's difficult aligning but doable and cheap. I've reconed JbL bookshelf 8" to 5" reference monitors this way. Semoer Fi.
Paul thanks for yet another awesome video as of late my vintage l88 jbl's have been sounding well for lack of a better term not as bright as they used to and I have been given serious consideration towards recapping the crossover thanks again
Thanks Paul, little late to the party. I had bought a pr. of AR AT-10's when stationed in Germany. (1986'ish.) Stored them away for several years and in about 2007, I had discovered the orange foam surrounds had disintegrated. Found a replacement kit online and was easy to replace. Today, 2020, they sound great. I once looked at the cross-overs, and saw no signs of leakage to the caps. So might take your advise and order some replacements. KB
Audio Advice in Tulsa, OK. Back in the early 90s. I actually had a bad car audio installation experience with them soon after, so I won't buy shit from them ever again.
Yep, those are great places to start when improving old speakers! I also look at the cabinets and seal any cracks or seams for air leaks with caulking or glue, because quite a few older speakers didn't get sealed all that well, from what I've seen, and sealing any air leaks in the speaker cabinet will also greatly improve the sound, especially the bass response, regardless of whether the speaker is sealed or ported. It definitely helps the overall sound improve, although not quite as much as fixing rotted foam surrounds on drivers and replacing bad, out of spec capacitors in the crossovers, (especially if electrolytic type), with brand new polypropylene type, which sound better and smoother!... There are also quite a few other smaller tweaks that you can do to improve just about any speaker, however the list would be a mile long, and even if you only do those major things mentioned above, then you will already have made the majority of the sound quality improvements that are the most significant, so do those things first, and then see how the speakers sound. If they are pleasing to you afterwards then leave them as they are, but if they still don't sound quite right then you can play with them a little more, however, you better know what you're doing or else you could just make them sound even worse if you don't fix them correctly... Speaker designing, building, repairing, and improving is definitely an "art", one which takes many years or even decades to learn all about and fully appreciate! I certainly enjoy the awesome sound rewards afterwards with each pair of speakers I work on though, so overall I think it's worth the many painstaking hours and days of work per speaker! (Sometimes more) (Because it's great fun!)
Hi Joe could you give me advice on how I can upgrade my speakers. I can find the mid range and tweeter capacitor but the low woofer has none. If you have advice please let me know
@@d.s.w7779 I can literally give you hours and hours, basically an entire "book" worth of advice about speakers, so I guess I would be of most help answering any very specific questions you may have. BTW, not all woofer crossover circuits have a capacitor in them. Only the higher order (12dB/octave, 2nd order, or higher crossover circuits for the woofer) have (a) capacitor(s) in them. If your specific speaker does NOT have any capacitors in the woofer section, then it would only be either a 6dB/octave, 1st order crossover on the woofer, (i.e. using only 1 inductor), OR it may just be hooked up "full-range", with just wires directly from the input terminals to the woofer itself. If it's the latter where the woofer doesn't have ANY crossover components in its hookup, then the manufacturer was just intending on relying on the woofer's natural high frequency rolloff, which can work fine too if implemented/designed correctly. If the overall speaker's sound quality is generally good to start with then you might just want to upgrade the capacitors in the midrange and tweeter circuits with new polypropylene ones, (especially if the original capacitors were/are electrolytic ones), and then see how the overall sound quality, imaging, clarity, etc., improves. If it's to your liking after that then you could just leave it at that and call it done. But if it still sounds "not quite right", there are literally hundreds of individual things you can do to a speaker to make it sound even better still, but unless you're a serious tweaker, with LOTS of time on your hands, AND you really know what you are doing, then I'd just start with the basics first and then give the speakers a careful extended listening before going further than that, because if you DON'T know what you are doing then you can potentially make a speaker sound WORSE than original also!... I'd really have to see your exact speakers, along with their condition, both physically and electrically, inside and out first, before I could give any more generalized advice... But feel free to ask me any extremely specific questions that you don't know the answer to and I'll try my best to help you. Hope this helps!
Infinity still sells refoam kits. New foam or rubber surrounds for most of their vintage line. I've bought them, and used them. They are just as good as new now!
I took a good working Bose 501s IV minus the sub and replaced all the drivers and crossovers. Basically a whole new speaker using old cabinets. They now sound louder, cleaner, and the bass is incredible. That is good for me since I listen to plenty of hip hop
I have two sets of Infinity RSIIIa's made about the same time as the IRS V's. Did one set of surrounds, the others are still like new. They use ribbon tweeters and have found over the years the Mylar gets loose. You can heat it with a heat gun and shrink it back up but new is better. As for crossovers, replaced the pots but would not touch the caps because they didn't get hot, leak or bulge. I like the way the speakers sound now and have looked into it and you cant get the same exact caps. Even the same value caps will sound different and not taking the risk unless there is a reason.
One of the very best sounding speakers i have ever been in the same room with are JBL Hartsfields in a huge room and the Infinity RS 2.5's with those sweet sounding EMIM midrange drivers. The guy who had the Infinity 2.5's had huge monoblock (stereo amps switched to mono) made in the USA Soundcraftsmen amps -- like 750 watts per side or something. Those 2.5's punched way above their weight...really sweet and powerful.
Infinity Crescendos are the same thing as the Kappa series. It's hard to outdo those EMIT-R tweeters rated to 37kHz! I have a pair of these myself... the smaller CS3006 model. Same tweeter, midrange, and a single 8" IMG Woofer. My surrounds had deteriorated a few years back, and I put them in the closet to worry about it later, and used a pair of Polks in their place. I recently found a place to get the surrounds replaced, and wow am I glad I did! I had almost forgotten how much better those Infinity's sounded. As someone else mentioned, the Crescendos were "exclusively sold" by Circuit City in the 90s... back in CC's prime... they had quite a few manufacturers that made models exclusively for them, but were really just another model "rebranded". Great video!
Yes Sir, love the Crescendos. It's kinda like having a pair of Kappa 9.1's that are much easier to power. I love my Kappa 8's but if you own them, or any other vintage Infinity speaker it'a a love / hate relationship
My dad had bought the kef 104/2 in the mid 80's, haven't restored them yet, but the tweeters ferrofluid will gum up and/or dry out, so you have to replace tweeter or take it apart and clean out the old ferrofluid and add new ferrofluid to it, and like you said in the video, the woofer surrounds and foam donuts have dry rotted by now and extremely brittle, also the caps in the crossover will need to be replaced with new ones. All the Kef 104/2 suffer from these issues I've described above. I'm probably going to help my dad fix them after I fix up his Hafler DH220 Power amp.
I would solder as many leads, connections as convenient, or re-grasp clips. I plan to sandbag the corners of my Advents - right now I have separated the tweeters and upturned the woofer boxes (on 5 inch posts) to play as omni - knowing that Empires and Ohms had woofers not facing the room. My other notion was to spread cone stress evenly on new foams, Kloss choice of piston material having been so heavy; it occurred ot me thart gravity might speed the (papier-machee?) cone's back travel, to rest, after impulse. The waffle tweeters play co-axially with the woofers. Tweets tipped back 30 degrees (60 degree closer to normal than are the woofers). Tweets are also - as of now - raised 20 inches above woofers, thus about 36 inches above floor. Subsequently I did see Linkwitz DIY designs. So far I have done only the foams, have only cheapy monster cable & Proton power, but the image you can make with the described vintage speaker hack is a treat. Unlike Linkwitz I avoided PVC plumbing and found some multiply school table legs as tweeter mounts - 18 ga wires run through the screw holes up thru baffke board (past DIY tweeter hole lid & seal)
About 20 years ago I came across 2 pairs of Koss floor standing speakers, one pair had problems, I found a few bad resistors in the crossover. I replaced all the resistors and broken plastic toggle switches, good sounding speakers.
I have a pair of late 1960's Noresco speakers with 6 inch German drivers that have cloth surrounds, they still work perfectly, nothing has ever been done to them and I added a Totem 8 inch mini subwoofer with built in 150 watt amp which improves the bass dramatically going down to 29 htz. , the main speakers are driven by a Yamaha 45 watts per channel receiver that sounds very nice. So over 50 year old speakers with walnut veneer that never wear out, hard to beat.
I just got some mid 1970's b&o m70, 4 way speakers to refurbish , the surrounds are amazingly intact but the magnets have detached themselves from the midrange and woofer, aged glue seems to be the culprit , never seen this problem before , all fixed now and I'm listening to the 70's again 😆
I have 1985 RS-10's. Driven by a vintage HarmonK. Sweetest sounding speakers i've ever owned. I Gotta re-skirt too. I'm thinking going custom...a carbon fiber impregnated kevlar. not the foam. This helped.
Every audiophile's nightmare, my nephew got to one of my dome tweeters, I saw it coming but couldn't move as fast as him, that little finger extended and moving with a curious look, I tried not to scream, but I did. Used my vacuum to pop it back out, years later... no complaints
i made my own surrounds out of bicycle tire innertube ! i have a 10inch rock fozgate 700watt sub woofer for my car and there wasnt any surrounds left on it so i got a normal innertube cut it to fit and used super glue to hold it in place and i am still amazed over a year later of hard thumping bass everyday it still sounds and holding up perfect!
I've got a set of Yamaha NS-A836 I picked up at a garage sale for five dollars each and to this day they absolutely pound out amazing sound, I've hooked them up to each of the four stereos I have and the sound is consistent, little to any difference between the four systems other then power output
Paul,I just saw a video on the system that Ken Fritz designed and put together himself.I could not help but notice the huge speakers he had and wondered if you ever had the chance to hear them for yourself.I could not help but wonder how they compared to the IRS V.I saw thet PS Audio had a piece of equipment in there.Sad to see what became of Ken and the fire sale auction for his equipment after his death.Thanks for all the great info.
The material inside the speaker being exact in weight and volume was important in acoustic suspension speakers, where the cabinet was a completely sealed/non ported design. Such as the AR speakers which were filled with Rag wool ( Kinda nasty stuff), and if the volume of the material was changed, the performance and character of the speaker changed as well.
I did my Infinity QLS (Quantum 1) a few years back. Just about everything in the crossovers except the inductors was replaced and upgraded. I also found replacement drivers for the dome midranges as I was growing tired of repairing these. Refoamed the woofers again along with new surrounds for the midbass drivers. Did new solder connections to the EMIT tweeters as well. Today they sound like new. Completely rebuilding the crossovers was very important and even IF the caps did read okay, rip those suckers out and replace using only high quality metalized polypropylene caps.
Steve Roginski , "Metalized polypropylene capacitors" = a type of electrolytic capacitor? If not, is there anything I should be shopping for regarding Metalized polypropylene equivalents to electrolytics when rebuilding crossovers? This has become a focus as of late for power supply circuits and really any electronics I'd like to free from the electrolytic aging process and its effect on circuit operation over time. I hear that one wants to keep polypropylene capacitors away from neighboring parts that get heated during operation as well as making sure to sink heat away from polypropylene capacitor leads when soldering because they are sensitive to heat which will result in changing their capacitance value which they retain even after cooling off. Any references / advice / links would be much appreciated !
Refoamed some B&O S80's from 1981 and waiting on crossovers to arrive with new capacitors. I will check the cabinet seams for leaks as others have suggested.
The idea is to find drivers that work well with the cabinet volume of the original cabinets. From there, which is finding the proper woofers for the cabinet volume you have in your vintage speakers, matching midranges and tweeters to work with you new woofer set up is imperative. I'm refurbishing a pair of Design Acoustics PS 10's which have extremely small cabinet volumes. They would work fine with. 8" speakers, but the original woofers was 10". That make things difficult, so I haven't found the perfect woofers for them. But I did find a pair of fiberglass varivents that trick the drivers into thinking they were in a larger cabinet to lower the system Q so that the bass is not boomy, us response is low enough to be useable. But they've been out of production for years. Otherwise do your best to find the right woofers for the size cabinet you have, and don't be afraid to look into car subwoofers to get the job done. The. Choose midrange and tweeters that have an output close to that of the woofers you'll be using. 1 or 2 db won't be too bad, but I'd keep it closer. After that designing a crossover network that will work for the new drivers is imperative! Once you've got that figured you have to listen to them and decide of you get the response you want! Good luck
Areas to consider. Driver surrounds and overall condition, crossover components and many times crossover design that matches the driver specs more closely (crossover frequency points), enclosure damping material (replacing or adding) and cabinet bracing.
I used fiberglass damping (widely used, similar to insulating material) in the speaker systems I made (can't imagine why organic materials were used). It was impervious to temperature and humidity issues and on inspecting systems 30+ years later the material is still intact and working as intended. Surround repair kits were common back then, inexpensive, and worked well.
There are mixed feelings about fibreglass due to the minute glass shards that can work their way into the voice coil and cause problems with rubbing etc. Before learning of this I did use fibreglass roll in several prototype speakers, it sounded fine but I didn't use long term and can't comment on any negative effects. As always, experimentation and experience will provide the best solution.
Spot-on advice. After a couple times, one can become pretty proficient at replacing surrounds. My first try...meh, but with just a little experience the surrounds can look just like factory work. And the crossovers can be restored with the minimum of electronics background.
I own refoamed OLA's which sound fabulous, Dynaco A35's which have Butyl Rubber surrounds, look new and sound great! Got a pair of ADS 700's coming tomorrow, can't wait to hear these. Love vintage speakers.
my dad has a pair dynaco A25 but he passed away 10 years ago now my mom use the speakers as telephone stand and plant pot stand. I should go take a look inside and see how the speaker surround condition. Where did u had the woofer surround redone?
Hi Paul - in my basement i've got a pair of Telefunken TLX 2 built in the 1980s, connected to a "modern" Yamaha RXV 361 and they still sound amazing ! What do you think about vintage german sound gear?
I have a pair of early AR-2ax from about 1964-65. They sound amazing, but the pots that control the tweeter and mid drivers are fried. The woofer surrounds use an impregnated cloth that is still perfectly functional. No foam or dried up rubber on these. Someday, I'll get around to replacing pots, refinishing cabinets and get them into a system again.
The pots are probably not fried. Usually, these are wire-wound L-pads, which turn a bit roughly and tend to be noisy (electrically) especially after many years. You may be able to improve them by running them up and down through the full range many times.
Marianne Oelund - as it turns out, they were corroded beyond repair. Apparently, the rock wool batting they used off-gasses and this causes the contacts to disintegrate. I replaced them and they work perfectly now. They sound especially good with low damping factor amplification.
I found a pair of AR-2's in an apartment disposal room, and I cleaned the pots, new surrounds and refinished the veneer as well as new cloth for the grills , they sound fine now, nice deep bass from the 10 inch main drivers. Very heavy solid cabinets.
Where can I find the gasket (cardboard or rubber ring that goes around the speaker surround) for a 10" Infinity? See some online but they come with screw holes but Infinity's screw into the cabinet outside this ring / Gasket.
In a pair of old speakers, that I once owned the dampening material was completely turned into powder. It was completely gone, including the cone of the woofers.
The bad surrounds were made from closed cell foam materials which is easier to form and manufacture as it starts as liquid rubber which is then mixed with a reactant like isocyanate which causes it to bubble and then solidify in a mold.
Interesting! I have a pair of Harbeth LS3/5A I bought in 1992 - treated them always with most care and they sound great, but now I wonder if there is anything I should do.
For anyone with ports, would doing simple calculations then installing "equivalent" length ports with flared openings at both ends be worth it to quiet down / mitigate port chuffing during longer excurions of vintage / older woofers / subwoofers? _____ Have wondered on more than one occasion: has port turbulence been found to be a defining affectation on the cabinet tuning or its capabilities at those lower frequencies which might play into its efficiency and accuracy?
I run a full 1974 pioneer hifi system through a pair of very old yamaha speakers I am extremely happy with it, digital just doesn't compare the band width is wider on anologue.
Paul, I have a pair of Infinity Column II's. Bought them new in Dec 1979. At the time they were amazing, but they seem to have lost their luster and sparkle. I spoke to a tech locally who suggested it might just be a contact type issue, but I think he was avoiding having the speakers in his tiny shop. What do you think Paul, should they be recapped?
I have a pair of Utah WD-90 I think from the 1970s. The woofers are gone I gave them to a thrift store. I replaced them with Rockville 12" that were the closest thing I could find to what was in there. They load from the back. The Rockville woofers just fell right in perfect, easy. But I'm hitting a roadblock with replacing the tweeters. Not going to replace the mids, they are out of there, I'm making it a two way from the 3 way that they were. Best I can tell the tweets are 4 inch, what do you recommend for replacements keeping in mind that they load from the back, front of tweet has to be flush for mounting. Many are tapered off made for front loading.
Great advise, I had my Philips 22AH487(1978) recapped, the thing is the repairman said though the components on the crossoverboard looked liked shit, they didn't have to be replaced in his opinion. The surounds of the woofers are silicone rubber and still good. The 80-ties were full of FOAM !!! Is rockwool still a good filler ?
Dear Mr Gowan id like your opinon weather its worth sending a pair of vintage speakers my being a pair of small loud speakers from (kef to G.R. research ) to upgrade the voice coils? not the crossovers thoughr reason being i dont want the imaging aspects of the sound reduced ,Thanks!
Thanks for the return. I thought of that after I commented. And what I should have said was to just replace the lowest value cap (main tweeter cap) with a ceramic. I use ceramics for my speaker crossover that I design only on the nain tweeter cap and use electrolytics for the rest. I found the ceramics give a way cleaner edge to the top end that sounds natural instead of somewhat "hissy". And in the speech the "S's" sound like "S's" instead of "Z's".
@@marianneoelund2940 On tweeters the yellow caps from Jaycar Electronics (Australia) sound better than their electrolytic caps (sice most people have tweeters). I build up coaxials with a tweeter inside. And I use single drivers too in other speaker builds and (to my surprise is that with single drivers the electrolytic caps sound better (with my crossover/filter thingies)...with my ears, that is. But I'm not sure if my yellow caps are ceramic or the other type film caps you mentioned. I will try them out if the yellow caps are actually ceramic. Thanks for the comment.
The old butyl rubber surrounds are very durable, as long as they are not exposed to direct sunlight for long periods of time. I have a pair of Dynaco A-50 speakers from the 1970's that still have clean and flexible butyl surrounds.The problematic surrounds are usually made of foam rubber. I had a pair of Infinity RSIIIB's with foam surrounds that rotted out completely in less than 10 years. I never bought another pair of speakers with foam surrounds after that.
I have an old Magnavox 1966? solid-state console cabinet stereo that is beyond repair for the receiver/phono components, but I want to use the speakers and cabinet for simply speakers connected to a more modern receiver/amp. I'm hoping the sound will be fairly good, with the 12" speakers and nice horn speakers. I need to verify the ohm ratings. This unit had a masonite, loose fitting rear panel, with a down facing rectangular cutout in the bottom of the cabinet (factory opening). Should this panel be kept in place for best performance? Thanks
On a whim I had bought some old speakers from a thrift store for $10. They sounded pretty terrible right off the bat. I replaced the crossover and they immediately sounded much better. Make no mistake - they are not audiophile class speakers, but they are perfect for a garage. There is an extra layer of irony in that most of the speakers I’ve built in my life were constructed while listening to music off the thrift store pair.
got a set of yamaha ns690 mark 1 40 years ago. The woofer surrounds were like an oily cloth. Still perfect. Then came the ns 690 mark 2. Their surrounds were foam, and rotted in a decade or two.
3:20 This has happened to a pair of KEF Reference 103/4 from 1993 that I have found, all that material was in flakes when I opened the cabinets. I fortunately manage to get hold of Simply Speakers in the US to send me a replacement surround and center part (donuts?) - I wish that was the whole problem with these speakers... the tweeters were gone, and the HF drivers had the magnets of center. This was early stages of the UniQ drivers, so the Tweeter and Woofer were two separate parts put together. I'm currently trying to contact KEF to see if I can buy their new UniQ drivers - not sure if that is possible but will see...
Anyone have an idea of where I can get info on Teledyne AR-30B crossover diagram? I picked up a pair and the original crossovers was replaced with ones from another speaker line. Willing to travel down a rabbit hole to find this info. Thanks
If somebody pokes your tweeter dust cover, you can unpoke it by sucking it out with a vacuum hose. Not kidding. Turn on the vacuum, smother the tweeter with the hose and pull away very very quickly.
Hello to all, I am kinda new in higher end audio, and I have seen here that Infinity RS5 speakers are great, and I have a chance to buy Infinity RS7. I tried to find a review but with no luck, so can somebody tell me are they any good?
I have some Kef speakers that have ferrofluid in the tweeter's magnetic gap. A lot of those have dried out. I expect mine will become problematic someday too. Kef was not the only brand with this issue. There are videos out there showing ferrofluid replacement. I had an exchange with a speaker company and they claim that different fluids have different properties and it's a guessing game as to what the mfgr originally used.
Absolutely swap out old electrolytic caps in the crossover but otherwise I would be careful about "upgrading" parts because sometimes there is more to it than just the value of an inductor. For example that inductor may have an extra R value that the "upgraded" part does not or has less of. Intuitively this sounds like a good thing until you find out that the manufacture already corrected for the value in the crossover and you will need to take extra measurements to find out what parts, in this case an extra resistor, are needed to make things right with the crossover. Easier to leave coils and resistors that are not damaged alone and just swap out electrolytic caps as needed. Also leave PP caps alone, they are not bad unless abused by a horrible person.
Interesting. Old speakers also have a tendency of losing db sync pairing with time, meaning that left and right speaker become lose and out of control. I have heard several 15+ year old speakers that got so old and out of sync, it just sounded so bad so that right or left one was around 85db and the other one was around 89db. Especially big unit speakers in the 8+ inch drivers nearing 20 years old, sound many times so unclear and badly timed when they get old. Yes they are nice and fun and retro, but I think that we with the new technology have come so very far compared to the limit old sound.
Paul, what is it with you???? Your explanations and delivery are addictive! You are lucid, entertaining and produce videos definitely worth watching. I always seem to learn something new, thanks.
One: Polyester Fill has almost no effect on how a speaker works. If you really want the speaker to be damped, you need to get good old fiberglass insulation. Two: Most of those lower and midmarket sealed acoustic-suspension speakers had cabinets that were too small, to give boomier bass. Assuming that you don't want teenage boom boom boom, the fiberglass will help. But the woofer really wants a bigger box. The bass response will be less peaky and actually go deeper.
It's not hard to replace surrounds yourself. Kits cost $30 to $50. The process isn't complicated or require particular skill. I've done several. Thanks for the cap replacement tip. I always replace old caps in vintage equipment, but I never thought about those in my vintage speakers.
When you said you changed the roll surrounds on the IRS subs I wonder how much their t/s parameters changed .. thinking of fs CMS and Vas... if it was a significant change then box size would be an issue here
Hello Paul, what is your opinion about the magnetic fluid tweeters that were widely spread from about 1980 to 2000? Usually, the magnetic fluid has dried out and the cooling as well as the damping effect of the fluid has gone. Is there anything to be done to these vintage speakers? Can the fluid be replaced?
You usually would need to take off the faceplate if possible so that you can manually remove all the old fluid and iron particles. Then you can put in new fluid. Apparently there may be certain specs of fluids, but that may be hard to determine. I'm not sure if there's a way to just replenish the oil by itself, as the iron particles won't disappear unless they start rusting from lack of fluid.
But don't _overtighten_ screws. Not just on loudspeakers, but anywhere screws are used. It's a common mistake. You can distort what you are attaching, strip threads, or disintegrate the substrate you screw into.
ive tested a lot of speakers and if the cap is not worn down on the dynaco A25 is seems to beat a lot of speakers much more expensive including some bw 630is sure its subjective but in my opinion the mids were better and the way the mids combined with the base was deeper rounder and smoother and even faster after replacing cap ( the caps in one of my pairs were bad another pair they were fine, this can be hit or miss )
I found some vintage KEF C20's in an op shop for 5 bucks. They were worth about $700 in the 1980's. I tried them and they sounded like a piece-of-shit. So I re-designed the crossover and made new crossovers and now they sound great. The original chokes were way too small and did virtually nothing.
The older sand cast resistors degrade the sound significantly, newer types sound better. Replacing smaller electrolytics with polystyrene/polypropylene types also produces significant improvements, the old caps may have degraded too. Pot metal binding posts replaced with copper/phosphor types doesn't hurt either. Finally, damping highly resonant cabinet walls with some relatively thin damping material is worthwhile.
Rather common that a long term party animal can fry the resistors in a crossover. Many times I have had 10, 15, 20 watt resistors just crumble in my hand from all the heat stress.
Hi Paul Dave here in the UK. Please could you tell me anything about Sherwood audio I have had my Sherwood receiver CD player twin cassette deck. I brought it back in 1997 and it still perform's like new. It's not available in the UK anymore i don't know why they are in a most other European Country's. I wonder if you could tell me how Sherwood Hifi would rank agents other brands in 2018. Thanks Paul love watching your video's. All the best Dave.
Hi I am not the Paul who you are addressing I read you comment about the sherwood I have owned sherwood stuff in the past I would recommend keeping it they were very good quality hifi I currently run a 1974 pioneer which is just immense sound quality wise.
Re-magnetise the drivers? Speaker drivers use electromagnets so the magnetism is created by current. Does the core of the electromagnet or the copper coil on the speaker change electromagnetic characteristics over time and with use?
@@jeremylindemann5117 speakers use a permanent magnet attached to the back of the frame. The voicecoil is the only "electromagnet" I've never heard of re magnetizing speaker magnets although I have heard of some of the new style neo drivers losing their magnetism when overpowered to the point of failure.
It's rumored that ferrofluid in tweeters goes bad after a decade or so? I mentioned before that I use Polk SDA1's with A/D/S L710's on top of them and I am very satisfied,at least till I can get some larger B&W's or my dream Infinity Renaissance 90's. I have had bookshelf B&W's as well as KEF and was amazed by their tweeters as my Polks and ADS are much warmer or flat. If I replace one of the two tweeters on the Polks with say a ribbon of the same sensitivity as the Polk,do you think it will improve my top end? Thank you.
Hello nice video as always, I have also experienced many problems with dried out ferrofluid in tweeters from various manufacturers. It seems that it lasts between 5-10 years before changing to a dried oily sticky tar which then over damps the driver causing a loss of output and reduction in frequency extension. I have successfully dismantled many and carefully removed and cleaned them with excellent results, bearing in mind it will reduce overall power handling and slightly alter the damping of the tweeter. Much better than trying to match or replace an unobtainable vintage driver. Thanks again, Richard, London UK
I have a pair of KEF C60s and read online that replacing the ferrofluid helps rrstore the tweeters. I am not going to do it, for one they sound fine to me and I don't trust myself.
If I remove the drivers in an old cabinet because they are beyond repair and replace them with newer drivers do I need to do some sort of calculation for a new crossover? I assume that it's impossible to find new exact matches of the old drivers.
A friend of mine was given an old pair of Acoustic Research TSW-510s and the woofers and mid range units all required new surrounds as well as new caps in the crossover network boards. I'm pleased to report that they're performing really well now.
Thank you Paul! The exact information needed.
Hello Paul I am from Hong Kong I bought a Heresy almost 40 years old speakers I changed the caps reconed the woofers you are right they sound Super fantastic!
I have a pair of ADC 450As circa 1973 with blown tweeters. Fortunately, I have original literature showing the frequency response. I was able to source some new tweeters with very similar characteristics. I had to fabricate adapters to secure the new round tweeters in the original rectangular holes (large ceramic magnets). I replaced the surrounds on the woofers. The crossovers were semi-potted in a tar-like material, so were difficult to rebuild. Finally, I oiled the walnut enclosures. All-in-all, it was a fun project for a second system for my office.
Paul, I could listen to you all day. Yet another informative and interesting video. I'm glad I found your channel. Hello from the UK
Agreed. I hate this about Paul. I never know if I should listen to him or my stereo I made under his great lessons. What a guy!
Paul, you are very informative, fun and humble person, really enjoy your explanation videos on audio, hope someday can afford ps audio product
I have a pair Vintage Sansui SP-1500 5 way Speakers 🔊🔊 From the early ‘70’s that still sound and look Excellent! I Love them. 🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵
I purchased a pair of AR-3a speakers in late 1970. The foam surrounds lasted about 12 years (1983) and began to disintegrate. I had the surrounds replaced. In the late 90s I had to replace them again. So far they are holding up currently. I also have a pair of AR-3 speakers that have a type of cloth surrounds. I was given them used when a local audio repair shop closed. These had to be originally from the late fifties or early sixties. There have been no problems with them. I lived in Memphis, TN and later West Palm Beach, FL. I did a service call for a friend of a friend that had a system that featured four JBL Century L-100s. The complaint was that he couldn't balance the system. This guy really liked his music loud. His listening couch was closer to the left front speaker by several feet from the other speakers. He was putting his signal through a tape recorder pre-amp and feeding that into his audio amp including another pre-amp. I found that the mid-range and tweeters were blown on all three of the speakers that were farther away. I put my oscilloscope on the speaker inputs and found there was serious clipping on all three of these speakers. Mid-range and especially tweeters are easily damaged by clipped wave forms. What happens is the voice coils overheat and open. I explained to him why he should not run the signal through two pre-amplifiers and should equalize his distance to all four speakers if possible. You are correct that tweeter do very well if you do not abuse them.
Thank you so much! I'm planning on replacing the surrounds of my Bose 200ST's and this video was very useful!
Hi Paul.. I still using Snell type d and Thiel cs22 floor stander since 1986..and love it.
My Cerwin Vega E-315s that I bought in 97 in California went dry and disintegrated after 5 years in Okinawa then 3 years in San Diego. Here near Nagoya, Japan now. I replaced the surround foam a few years ago myself and they sound like new again! It's not hard if you love your speakers! I highly agree with you, Paul!
Here is an old Marine trick straight out of the field manual. Use an old green utility t-shirt (usmc), cut a circle, use Walmart or your local px tac glue. There, perfect surrounds will last forever. It's difficult aligning but doable and cheap. I've reconed JbL bookshelf 8" to 5" reference monitors this way. Semoer Fi.
Paul thanks for yet another awesome video as of late my vintage l88 jbl's have been sounding well for lack of a better term not as bright as they used to and I have been given serious consideration towards recapping the crossover thanks again
Thanks Paul, little late to the party. I had bought a pr. of AR AT-10's when stationed in Germany. (1986'ish.) Stored them away for several years and in about 2007, I had discovered the orange foam surrounds had disintegrated. Found a replacement kit online and was easy to replace. Today, 2020, they sound great. I once looked at the cross-overs, and saw no signs of leakage to the caps. So might take your advise and order some replacements. KB
Very good information. Change the caps and keep the same values. I have that logged in! Thank you.
I remember back in the day, Genesis speakers were perhaps the best speakers I'd listened to at the audio store. Great stuff.
TheAgeOfAnalog ,
Which audio store?
Audio Advice in Tulsa, OK. Back in the early 90s. I actually had a bad car audio installation experience with them soon after, so I won't buy shit from them ever again.
Yep, those are great places to start when improving old speakers! I also look at the cabinets and seal any cracks or seams for air leaks with caulking or glue, because quite a few older speakers didn't get sealed all that well, from what I've seen, and sealing any air leaks in the speaker cabinet will also greatly improve the sound, especially the bass response, regardless of whether the speaker is sealed or ported. It definitely helps the overall sound improve, although not quite as much as fixing rotted foam surrounds on drivers and replacing bad, out of spec capacitors in the crossovers, (especially if electrolytic type), with brand new polypropylene type, which sound better and smoother!...
There are also quite a few other smaller tweaks that you can do to improve just about any speaker, however the list would be a mile long, and even if you only do those major things mentioned above, then you will already have made the majority of the sound quality improvements that are the most significant, so do those things first, and then see how the speakers sound. If they are pleasing to you afterwards then leave them as they are, but if they still don't sound quite right then you can play with them a little more, however, you better know what you're doing or else you could just make them sound even worse if you don't fix them correctly...
Speaker designing, building, repairing, and improving is definitely an "art", one which takes many years or even decades to learn all about and fully appreciate! I certainly enjoy the awesome sound rewards afterwards with each pair of speakers I work on though, so overall I think it's worth the many painstaking hours and days of work per speaker! (Sometimes more) (Because it's great fun!)
Hi Joe could you give me advice on how I can upgrade my speakers. I can find the mid range and tweeter capacitor but the low woofer has none. If you have advice please let me know
@@d.s.w7779 I can literally give you hours and hours, basically an entire "book" worth of advice about speakers, so I guess I would be of most help answering any very specific questions you may have.
BTW, not all woofer crossover circuits have a capacitor in them. Only the higher order (12dB/octave, 2nd order, or higher crossover circuits for the woofer) have (a) capacitor(s) in them. If your specific speaker does NOT have any capacitors in the woofer section, then it would only be either a 6dB/octave, 1st order crossover on the woofer, (i.e. using only 1 inductor), OR it may just be hooked up "full-range", with just wires directly from the input terminals to the woofer itself. If it's the latter where the woofer doesn't have ANY crossover components in its hookup, then the manufacturer was just intending on relying on the woofer's natural high frequency rolloff, which can work fine too if implemented/designed correctly.
If the overall speaker's sound quality is generally good to start with then you might just want to upgrade the capacitors in the midrange and tweeter circuits with new polypropylene ones, (especially if the original capacitors were/are electrolytic ones), and then see how the overall sound quality, imaging, clarity, etc., improves. If it's to your liking after that then you could just leave it at that and call it done. But if it still sounds "not quite right", there are literally hundreds of individual things you can do to a speaker to make it sound even better still, but unless you're a serious tweaker, with LOTS of time on your hands, AND you really know what you are doing, then I'd just start with the basics first and then give the speakers a careful extended listening before going further than that, because if you DON'T know what you are doing then you can potentially make a speaker sound WORSE than original also!...
I'd really have to see your exact speakers, along with their condition, both physically and electrically, inside and out first, before I could give any more generalized advice... But feel free to ask me any extremely specific questions that you don't know the answer to and I'll try my best to help you. Hope this helps!
@@JoeJ-8282 thank you very much for your time and advice. Im going to start with the basics and see how things are from there.thank you again.
Infinity still sells refoam kits. New foam or rubber surrounds for most of their vintage line. I've bought them, and used them. They are just as good as new now!
My JBL L80t speakers I purchased new in 1985 have had new surrounds on the woofers and they still sound great
I took a good working Bose 501s IV minus the sub and replaced all the drivers and crossovers. Basically a whole new speaker using old cabinets. They now sound louder, cleaner, and the bass is incredible. That is good for me since I listen to plenty of hip hop
I have two sets of Infinity RSIIIa's made about the same time as the IRS V's. Did one set of surrounds, the others are still like new. They use ribbon tweeters and have found over the years the Mylar gets loose. You can heat it with a heat gun and shrink it back up but new is better. As for crossovers, replaced the pots but would not touch the caps because they didn't get hot, leak or bulge. I like the way the speakers sound now and have looked into it and you cant get the same exact caps. Even the same value caps will sound different and not taking the risk unless there is a reason.
8:15 Love those mountains!
One of the very best sounding speakers i have ever been in the same room with are JBL Hartsfields in a huge room and the Infinity RS 2.5's with those sweet sounding EMIM midrange drivers. The guy who had the Infinity 2.5's had huge monoblock (stereo amps switched to mono) made in the USA Soundcraftsmen amps -- like 750 watts per side or something. Those 2.5's punched way above their weight...really sweet and powerful.
Infinity Crescendos are the same thing as the Kappa series. It's hard to outdo those EMIT-R tweeters rated to 37kHz! I have a pair of these myself... the smaller CS3006 model. Same tweeter, midrange, and a single 8" IMG Woofer. My surrounds had deteriorated a few years back, and I put them in the closet to worry about it later, and used a pair of Polks in their place. I recently found a place to get the surrounds replaced, and wow am I glad I did! I had almost forgotten how much better those Infinity's sounded. As someone else mentioned, the Crescendos were "exclusively sold" by Circuit City in the 90s... back in CC's prime... they had quite a few manufacturers that made models exclusively for them, but were really just another model "rebranded". Great video!
Yes Sir, love the Crescendos. It's kinda like having a pair of Kappa 9.1's that are much easier to power. I love my Kappa 8's but if you own them, or any other vintage Infinity speaker it'a a love / hate relationship
Wow excellent story in the end :p
Success comes from experience
And experience comes from bad experiences :)
My dad had bought the kef 104/2 in the mid 80's, haven't restored them yet, but the tweeters ferrofluid will gum up and/or dry out, so you have to replace tweeter or take it apart and clean out the old ferrofluid and add new ferrofluid to it, and like you said in the video, the woofer surrounds and foam donuts have dry rotted by now and extremely brittle, also the caps in the crossover will need to be replaced with new ones. All the Kef 104/2 suffer from these issues I've described above. I'm probably going to help my dad fix them after I fix up his Hafler DH220 Power amp.
I would solder as many leads, connections as convenient, or re-grasp clips. I plan to sandbag the corners of my Advents - right now I have separated the tweeters and upturned the woofer boxes (on 5 inch posts) to play as omni - knowing that Empires and Ohms had woofers not facing the room. My other notion was to spread cone stress evenly on new foams, Kloss choice of piston material having been so heavy; it occurred ot me thart gravity might speed the (papier-machee?) cone's back travel, to rest, after impulse.
The waffle tweeters play co-axially with the woofers. Tweets tipped back 30 degrees (60 degree closer to normal than are the woofers). Tweets are also - as of now - raised 20 inches above woofers, thus about 36 inches above floor. Subsequently I did see Linkwitz DIY designs. So far I have done only the foams, have only cheapy monster cable & Proton power, but the image you can make with the described vintage speaker hack is a treat. Unlike Linkwitz I avoided PVC plumbing and found some multiply school table legs as tweeter mounts - 18 ga wires run through the screw holes up thru baffke board (past DIY tweeter hole lid & seal)
About 20 years ago I came across 2 pairs of Koss floor standing speakers, one pair had problems, I found a few bad resistors in the crossover. I replaced all the resistors and broken plastic toggle switches, good sounding speakers.
I have a pair of late 1960's Noresco speakers with 6 inch German drivers that have cloth surrounds, they still work perfectly, nothing has ever been done to them and I added a Totem 8 inch mini subwoofer with built in 150 watt amp which improves the bass dramatically going down to 29 htz. , the main speakers are driven by a Yamaha 45 watts per channel receiver that sounds very nice. So over 50 year old speakers with walnut veneer that never wear out, hard to beat.
I just got some mid 1970's b&o m70, 4 way speakers to refurbish , the surrounds are amazingly intact but the magnets have detached themselves from the midrange and woofer, aged glue seems to be the culprit , never seen this problem before , all fixed now and I'm listening to the 70's again 😆
I am a hifi dealer....that is a massive problem with Beovox speakers I dont think the magnets were ever glued or screwed!!!
I have 1985 RS-10's. Driven by a vintage HarmonK. Sweetest sounding speakers i've ever owned. I Gotta re-skirt too. I'm thinking going custom...a carbon fiber impregnated kevlar. not the foam. This helped.
Every audiophile's nightmare, my nephew got to one of my dome tweeters, I saw it coming but couldn't move as fast as him, that little finger extended and moving with a curious look, I tried not to scream, but I did. Used my vacuum to pop it back out, years later... no complaints
I know that feeling. I had a small cousin that poked a hole on the woofers of a couple of vintage Panasonic speakers.
Bro Ong my little brother somehow pushed this plastic dust cap on a 15 in woofer on this huge vintage and one of my tweeters
i made my own surrounds out of bicycle tire innertube ! i have a 10inch rock fozgate 700watt sub woofer for my car and there wasnt any surrounds left on it so i got a normal innertube cut it to fit and used super glue to hold it in place and i am still amazed over a year later of hard thumping bass everyday it still sounds and holding up perfect!
I've got a set of Yamaha NS-A836 I picked up at a garage sale for five dollars each and to this day they absolutely pound out amazing sound, I've hooked them up to each of the four stereos I have and the sound is consistent, little to any difference between the four systems other then power output
Paul,I just saw a video on the system that Ken Fritz designed and put together himself.I could not help but notice the huge speakers he had and wondered if you ever had the chance to hear them for yourself.I could not help but wonder how they compared to the IRS V.I saw thet PS Audio had a piece of equipment in there.Sad to see what became of Ken and the fire sale auction for his equipment after his death.Thanks for all the great info.
The material inside the speaker being exact in weight and volume was important in acoustic suspension speakers, where the cabinet was a completely sealed/non ported design. Such as the AR speakers which were filled with Rag wool ( Kinda nasty stuff), and if the volume of the material was changed, the performance and character of the speaker changed as well.
I did my Infinity QLS (Quantum 1) a few years back. Just about everything in the crossovers except the inductors was replaced and upgraded. I also found replacement drivers for the dome midranges as I was growing tired of repairing these. Refoamed the woofers again along with new surrounds for the midbass drivers. Did new solder connections to the EMIT tweeters as well. Today they sound like new. Completely rebuilding the crossovers was very important and even IF the caps did read okay, rip those suckers out and replace using only high quality metalized polypropylene caps.
Steve Roginski ,
"Metalized polypropylene capacitors" = a type of electrolytic capacitor? If not, is there anything I should be shopping for regarding Metalized polypropylene equivalents to electrolytics when rebuilding crossovers? This has become a focus as of late for power supply circuits and really any electronics I'd like to free from the electrolytic aging process and its effect on circuit operation over time. I hear that one wants to keep polypropylene capacitors away from neighboring parts that get heated during operation as well as making sure to sink heat away from polypropylene capacitor leads when soldering because they are sensitive to heat which will result in changing their capacitance value which they retain even after cooling off. Any references / advice / links would be much appreciated !
Refoamed some B&O S80's from 1981 and waiting on crossovers to arrive with new capacitors. I will check the cabinet seams for leaks as others have suggested.
The idea is to find drivers that work well with the cabinet volume of the original cabinets. From there, which is finding the proper woofers for the cabinet volume you have in your vintage speakers, matching midranges and tweeters to work with you new woofer set up is imperative. I'm refurbishing a pair of Design Acoustics PS 10's which have extremely small cabinet volumes. They would work fine with. 8" speakers, but the original woofers was 10". That make things difficult, so I haven't found the perfect woofers for them. But I did find a pair of fiberglass varivents that trick the drivers into thinking they were in a larger cabinet to lower the system Q so that the bass is not boomy, us response is low enough to be useable. But they've been out of production for years. Otherwise do your best to find the right woofers for the size cabinet you have, and don't be afraid to look into car subwoofers to get the job done. The. Choose midrange and tweeters that have an output close to that of the woofers you'll be using. 1 or 2 db won't be too bad, but I'd keep it closer. After that designing a crossover network that will work for the new drivers is imperative! Once you've got that figured you have to listen to them and decide of you get the response you want! Good luck
Areas to consider. Driver surrounds and overall condition, crossover components and many times crossover design that matches the driver specs more closely (crossover frequency points), enclosure damping material (replacing or adding) and cabinet bracing.
I used fiberglass damping (widely used, similar to insulating material) in the speaker systems I made (can't imagine why organic materials were used). It was impervious to temperature and humidity issues and on inspecting systems 30+ years later the material is still intact and working as intended. Surround repair kits were common back then, inexpensive, and worked well.
There are mixed feelings about fibreglass due to the minute glass shards that can work their way into the voice coil and cause problems with rubbing etc.
Before learning of this I did use fibreglass roll in several prototype speakers, it sounded fine but I didn't use long term and can't comment on any negative effects.
As always, experimentation and experience will provide the best solution.
I would avoid fibreglass
Spot-on advice. After a couple times, one can become pretty proficient at replacing surrounds. My first try...meh, but with just a little experience the surrounds can look just like factory work. And the crossovers can be restored with the minimum of electronics background.
The values of the caps are COMPLETELY IMPORTANT!
I own refoamed OLA's which sound fabulous, Dynaco A35's which have Butyl Rubber surrounds, look new and sound great! Got a pair of ADS 700's coming tomorrow, can't wait to hear these. Love vintage speakers.
my dad has a pair dynaco A25 but he passed away 10 years ago now my mom use the speakers as telephone stand and plant pot stand. I should go take a look inside and see how the speaker surround condition. Where did u had the woofer surround redone?
jack schitt I didn’t, they are original. Nice name..... 🧐
Pioneer hpm-series had one of the best surrounds most still look great !
I have 1 HPM 150 in my basement
Show de conhecimento! Parabéns
Hi Paul - in my basement i've got a pair of Telefunken TLX 2 built in the 1980s, connected to a "modern" Yamaha RXV 361 and they still sound amazing ! What do you think about vintage german sound gear?
I have a pair of early AR-2ax from about 1964-65. They sound amazing, but the pots that control the tweeter and mid drivers are fried. The woofer surrounds use an impregnated cloth that is still perfectly functional. No foam or dried up rubber on these. Someday, I'll get around to replacing pots, refinishing cabinets and get them into a system again.
The pots are probably not fried. Usually, these are wire-wound L-pads, which turn a bit roughly and tend to be noisy (electrically) especially after many years. You may be able to improve them by running them up and down through the full range many times.
Marianne Oelund - as it turns out, they were corroded beyond repair. Apparently, the rock wool batting they used off-gasses and this causes the contacts to disintegrate. I replaced them and they work perfectly now.
They sound especially good with low damping factor amplification.
I found a pair of AR-2's in an apartment disposal room, and I cleaned the pots, new surrounds and refinished the veneer as well as new cloth for the grills , they sound fine now, nice deep bass from the 10 inch main drivers. Very heavy solid cabinets.
Where can I find the gasket (cardboard or rubber ring that goes around the speaker surround) for a 10" Infinity? See some online but they come with screw holes but Infinity's screw into the cabinet outside this ring / Gasket.
Some loudspeakers companies use ferrofluid for the tweeters so It can happen u must put new fluid in
3:20--That's FOAM surrounds! They lasted less than a year under humid climates !!
In a pair of old speakers, that I once owned the dampening material was completely turned into powder. It was completely gone, including the cone of the woofers.
The bad surrounds were made from closed cell foam materials which is easier to form and manufacture as it starts as liquid rubber which is then mixed with a reactant like isocyanate which causes it to bubble and then solidify in a mold.
Interesting! I have a pair of Harbeth LS3/5A I bought in 1992 - treated them always with most care and they sound great, but now I wonder if there is anything I should do.
For anyone with ports, would doing simple calculations then installing "equivalent" length ports with flared openings at both ends be worth it to quiet down / mitigate port chuffing during longer excurions of vintage / older woofers / subwoofers?
_____ Have wondered on more than one occasion: has port turbulence been found to be a defining affectation on the cabinet tuning or its capabilities at those lower frequencies which might play into its efficiency and accuracy?
I have a set of 1967 Tannoy Gold 15'' in Lancaster boxes, nothing compares.
I run a full 1974 pioneer hifi system through a pair of very old yamaha speakers I am extremely happy with it, digital just doesn't compare the band width is wider on anologue.
@Paul Any ideas where to get the correct surround for an Infinity 12" servo control woofer?
Paul, I have a pair of Infinity Column II's. Bought them new in Dec 1979. At the time they were amazing, but they seem to have lost their luster and sparkle. I spoke to a tech locally who suggested it might just be a contact type issue, but I think he was avoiding having the speakers in his tiny shop. What do you think Paul, should they be recapped?
I have a pair of Utah WD-90 I think from the 1970s. The woofers are gone I gave them to a thrift store. I replaced them with Rockville 12" that were the closest thing I could find to what was in there. They load from the back. The Rockville woofers just fell right in perfect, easy. But I'm hitting a roadblock with replacing the tweeters. Not going to replace the mids, they are out of there, I'm making it a two way from the 3 way that they were. Best I can tell the tweets are 4 inch, what do you recommend for replacements keeping in mind that they load from the back, front of tweet has to be flush for mounting. Many are tapered off made for front loading.
Great advise, I had my Philips 22AH487(1978) recapped, the thing is the repairman said though the components on the crossoverboard looked liked shit, they didn't have to be replaced in his opinion. The surounds of the woofers are silicone rubber and still good. The 80-ties were full of FOAM !!! Is rockwool still a good filler ?
Dear Mr Gowan id like your opinon weather its worth sending a pair of vintage speakers my being a pair of small loud speakers from (kef to G.R. research ) to upgrade the voice coils? not the crossovers thoughr reason being i dont want the imaging aspects of the sound reduced ,Thanks!
Crescendo and Sterling were sold at Circuit City
7:46 Change from the usual electrolytic caps to ceramic caps. Great improvement in treble sound.
Thanks for the return. I thought of that after I commented. And what I should have said was to just replace the lowest value cap (main tweeter cap) with a ceramic. I use ceramics for my speaker crossover that I design only on the nain tweeter cap and use electrolytics for the rest. I found the ceramics give a way cleaner edge to the top end that sounds natural instead of somewhat "hissy". And in the speech the "S's" sound like "S's" instead of "Z's".
I hope you mean film caps, not ceramic caps. Ceramics are not very linear.
@@marianneoelund2940 On tweeters the yellow caps from Jaycar Electronics (Australia) sound better than their electrolytic caps (sice most people have tweeters). I build up coaxials with a tweeter inside. And I use single drivers too in other speaker builds and (to my surprise is that with single drivers the electrolytic caps sound better (with my crossover/filter thingies)...with my ears, that is. But I'm not sure if my yellow caps are ceramic or the other type film caps you mentioned. I will try them out if the yellow caps are actually ceramic. Thanks for the comment.
The old butyl rubber surrounds are very durable, as long as they are not exposed to direct sunlight for long periods of time. I have a pair of Dynaco A-50 speakers from the 1970's that still have clean and flexible butyl surrounds.The problematic surrounds are usually made of foam rubber. I had a pair of Infinity RSIIIB's with foam surrounds that rotted out completely in less than 10 years. I never bought another pair of speakers with foam surrounds after that.
I was going to say that
Thanks
Hey Paul. What is the intro music on this clip?
I have an old Magnavox 1966? solid-state console cabinet stereo that is beyond repair for the receiver/phono components, but I want to use the speakers and cabinet for simply speakers connected to a more modern receiver/amp.
I'm hoping the sound will be fairly good, with the 12" speakers and nice horn speakers. I need to verify the ohm ratings.
This unit had a masonite, loose fitting rear panel, with a down facing rectangular cutout in the bottom of the cabinet (factory opening). Should this panel be kept in place for best performance?
Thanks
I had to listen for 5 mins to realize the background music (low frequency) was from the video, not from outside my apartment) :D
On a whim I had bought some old speakers from a thrift store for $10. They sounded pretty terrible right off the bat. I replaced the crossover and they immediately sounded much better.
Make no mistake - they are not audiophile class speakers, but they are perfect for a garage.
There is an extra layer of irony in that most of the speakers I’ve built in my life were constructed while listening to music off the thrift store pair.
got a set of yamaha ns690 mark 1 40 years ago. The woofer surrounds were like an oily cloth. Still perfect. Then came the ns 690 mark 2. Their surrounds were foam, and rotted in a decade or two.
Saludos de Mexico
3:20 This has happened to a pair of KEF Reference 103/4 from 1993 that I have found, all that material was in flakes when I opened the cabinets. I fortunately manage to get hold of Simply Speakers in the US to send me a replacement surround and center part (donuts?) - I wish that was the whole problem with these speakers... the tweeters were gone, and the HF drivers had the magnets of center. This was early stages of the UniQ drivers, so the Tweeter and Woofer were two separate parts put together. I'm currently trying to contact KEF to see if I can buy their new UniQ drivers - not sure if that is possible but will see...
Anyone have an idea of where I can get info on Teledyne AR-30B crossover diagram? I picked up a pair and the original crossovers was replaced with ones from another speaker line. Willing to travel down a rabbit hole to find this info. Thanks
According to a guy at audiokarma they were exclusive only sold at circuit city and each speaker cost $1,349.
If somebody pokes your tweeter dust cover, you can unpoke it by sucking it out with a vacuum hose. Not kidding. Turn on the vacuum, smother the tweeter with the hose and pull away very very quickly.
Hello to all, I am kinda new in higher end audio, and I have seen here that Infinity RS5 speakers are great, and I have a chance to buy Infinity RS7. I tried to find a review but with no luck, so can somebody tell me are they any good?
I used rubber cement for the surrounds.
I have some Kef speakers that have ferrofluid in the tweeter's magnetic gap. A lot of those have dried out. I expect mine will become problematic someday too. Kef was not the only brand with this issue. There are videos out there showing ferrofluid replacement. I had an exchange with a speaker company and they claim that different fluids have different properties and it's a guessing game as to what the mfgr originally used.
I bought some of the square Sony speakers as part of a surround system. The surrounds are missing, assumed disintegrated.
I have a pair of Bose 901. Can I add a tweeter to the my receivers?
Absolutely swap out old electrolytic caps in the crossover but otherwise I would be careful about "upgrading" parts because sometimes there is more to it than just the value of an inductor. For example that inductor may have an extra R value that the "upgraded" part does not or has less of. Intuitively this sounds like a good thing until you find out that the manufacture already corrected for the value in the crossover and you will need to take extra measurements to find out what parts, in this case an extra resistor, are needed to make things right with the crossover. Easier to leave coils and resistors that are not damaged alone and just swap out electrolytic caps as needed. Also leave PP caps alone, they are not bad unless abused by a horrible person.
Interesting.
Old speakers also have a tendency of losing db sync pairing with time, meaning that left and right speaker become lose and out of control. I have heard several 15+ year old speakers that got so old and out of sync, it just sounded so bad so that right or left one was around 85db and the other one was around 89db. Especially big unit speakers in the 8+ inch drivers nearing 20 years old, sound many times so unclear and badly timed when they get old. Yes they are nice and fun and retro, but I think that we with the new technology have come so very far compared to the limit old sound.
Paul, what is it with you???? Your explanations and delivery are addictive! You are lucid, entertaining and produce videos definitely worth watching. I always seem to learn something new, thanks.
You have a great memory Paul.
One: Polyester Fill has almost no effect on how a speaker works. If you really want the speaker to be damped, you need to get good old fiberglass insulation. Two: Most of those lower and midmarket sealed acoustic-suspension speakers had cabinets that were too small, to give boomier bass. Assuming that you don't want teenage boom boom boom, the fiberglass will help. But the woofer really wants a bigger box. The bass response will be less peaky and actually go deeper.
It's not hard to replace surrounds yourself. Kits cost $30 to $50. The process isn't complicated or require particular skill. I've done several.
Thanks for the cap replacement tip. I always replace old caps in vintage equipment, but I never thought about those in my vintage speakers.
When you said you changed the roll surrounds on the IRS subs I wonder how much their t/s parameters changed .. thinking of fs CMS and Vas... if it was a significant change then box size would be an issue here
Can't imagine Paul letting anyone touch those woofers, who didn't have fully equivalent replacement parts.
Hello Paul,
what is your opinion about the magnetic fluid tweeters that were widely spread from about 1980 to 2000? Usually, the magnetic fluid has dried out and the cooling as well as the damping effect of the fluid has gone. Is there anything to be done to these vintage speakers? Can the fluid be replaced?
You usually would need to take off the faceplate if possible so that you can manually remove all the old fluid and iron particles. Then you can put in new fluid. Apparently there may be certain specs of fluids, but that may be hard to determine.
I'm not sure if there's a way to just replenish the oil by itself, as the iron particles won't disappear unless they start rusting from lack of fluid.
tighten the screws on the woofers and tweeters...especially since vintage
Especially if they are Celestion speakers! :P which are notorious for having less than tight screws right from the factory.
But don't _overtighten_ screws. Not just on loudspeakers, but anywhere screws are used. It's a common mistake. You can distort what you are attaching, strip threads, or disintegrate the substrate you screw into.
its like saying MAKE SURE U PLUG THE SPEAKERS IN FOR BEST RESULTS. THIS IS V IMPORTANT
i love vintage dynaco A25s
dynacoA25 so do I!
ive tested a lot of speakers and if the cap is not worn down on the dynaco A25 is seems to beat a lot of speakers much more expensive including some bw 630is sure its subjective but in my opinion the mids were better and the way the mids combined with the base was deeper rounder and smoother and even faster after replacing cap ( the caps in one of my pairs were bad another pair they were fine, this can be hit or miss )
I got some technics twin 12s sb A 71 speakers they are they big tall speakers with a lot of base
I found some vintage KEF C20's in an op shop for 5 bucks. They were worth about $700 in the 1980's. I tried them and they sounded like a piece-of-shit. So I re-designed the crossover and made new crossovers and now they sound great. The original chokes were way too small and did virtually nothing.
The older sand cast resistors degrade the sound significantly, newer types sound better. Replacing smaller electrolytics with polystyrene/polypropylene types also produces significant improvements, the old caps may have degraded too. Pot metal binding posts replaced with copper/phosphor types doesn't hurt either. Finally, damping highly resonant cabinet walls with some relatively thin damping material is worthwhile.
My 81', 82' -ish Cybernet 3 way speakers sound a little different from each other in mid to high freqs , could it be capacitors?
Ive got the same issue with my vintage Vandersteen Model 2Cs. I will be taking a look at replacing the electrolytic caps in the crossovers.
Rather common that a long term party animal can fry the resistors in a crossover. Many times I have had 10, 15, 20 watt resistors just crumble in my hand from all the heat stress.
Hi Paul Dave here in the UK. Please could you tell me anything about Sherwood audio I have had my
Sherwood receiver CD player twin cassette deck.
I brought it back in 1997 and it still perform's like new.
It's not available in the UK anymore i don't know why they are in a most other European Country's.
I wonder if you could tell me how Sherwood Hifi would rank agents other brands in 2018.
Thanks Paul love watching your video's. All the best Dave.
Hi I am not the Paul who you are addressing I read you comment about the sherwood I have owned sherwood stuff in the past I would recommend keeping it they were very good quality hifi I currently run a 1974 pioneer which is just immense sound quality wise.
If I remember right JBL g-series were paper cone and paper surround.
Owning a commercial sound company using industrial speakers, I've had to remagnetize the drivers multiple times-- brings the power right up to spec.
Re-magnetise the drivers?
Speaker drivers use electromagnets so the magnetism is created by current. Does the core of the electromagnet or the copper coil on the speaker change electromagnetic characteristics over time and with use?
@@jeremylindemann5117 speakers use a permanent magnet attached to the back of the frame. The voicecoil is the only "electromagnet"
I've never heard of re magnetizing speaker magnets although I have heard of some of the new style neo drivers losing their magnetism when overpowered to the point of failure.
It's rumored that ferrofluid in tweeters goes bad after a decade or so?
I mentioned before that I use Polk SDA1's with A/D/S L710's on top of them and I am very satisfied,at least till I can get some larger B&W's or my dream Infinity Renaissance 90's. I have had bookshelf B&W's as well as KEF and was amazed by their tweeters as my Polks and ADS are much warmer or flat. If I replace one of the two tweeters on the Polks with say a ribbon of the same sensitivity as the Polk,do you think it will improve my top end? Thank you.
Hello nice video as always, I have also experienced many problems with dried out ferrofluid in tweeters from various manufacturers. It seems that it lasts between 5-10 years before changing to a dried oily sticky tar which then over damps the driver causing a loss of output and reduction in frequency extension. I have successfully dismantled many and carefully removed and cleaned them with excellent results, bearing in mind it will reduce overall power handling and slightly alter the damping of the tweeter. Much better than trying to match or replace an unobtainable vintage driver. Thanks again, Richard, London UK
Col. Angus not sure where you get your rumours from....I would avoid that place
I have a pair of KEF C60s and read online that replacing the ferrofluid helps rrstore the tweeters. I am not going to do it, for one they sound fine to me and I don't trust myself.
If I remove the drivers in an old cabinet because they are beyond repair and replace them with newer drivers do I need to do some sort of calculation for a new crossover?
I assume that it's impossible to find new exact matches of the old drivers.
I think you do. I'm in the same boat, I'm going to try and reuse an enclosure from which the woofer/tweeter is beyond repair.
FYI: Paper cones don't deteriorate like modern foam surrounds...this is a gud thing about vintage speakers!