# Speaker repair in Niagara/Hamilton area ?



## thegame (May 15, 2006)

Any recommendations ? Not sure if my speaker needs a recone or something else but looking to get it fixed for a reasonable price.

Speaker doesn't register on my meter. Somethings blown I guess.


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## GrungeMan (Jun 4, 2009)

I only know of Santon Audio in Markham

Grungy


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

You might want to check the continuity between the delicate, braided (be careful not to damage these) "spider wires" coming from the cone and the terminals that you solder to or put the connectors on.

Just a thought.

Cheers

Dave


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## ssdeluxe (Mar 29, 2007)

here's a gr8 guy in the toronto area, Larry M Roy 416 537 3056

[email protected]

Larrry however does not have recone kits, if you need them you must source them yourself, but he can put them in. He has a gr8 deal of info about spkrs.


oh yes, also:

http://superfuzzaudio.com/ , Tim has a guy that works his speakers for him.

and ,
capsulemusic.com, also has a fellow the guys use.

oh...funny, didn't realise this was you Gary. !


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## Wild Bill (May 3, 2006)

thegame said:


> Any recommendations ? Not sure if my speaker needs a recone or something else but looking to get it fixed for a reasonable price.
> 
> Speaker doesn't register on my meter. Somethings blown I guess.


Speaker re-coning used to be a common practice. Over the years things have changed.

The main thing is the price of new speakers! Re-coning typically costs about $100. With the price of new speakers like Eminence it usually makes more sense to buy a new speaker!

The other thing is the re-cone kit. Speakers don't all have standard cones and voice coils that a repairman can order any time he wants from the local Wal-Mart! The manufacturer of the speaker has to make a kit available. Few do anymore, especially those in China!

To my knowledge there are only a few hifi speaker re-coning shops around, few of whom have ever even heard of the fact that guitar speakers are different from hifi speakers.

Santon Audio is one of the few professional shops left. Usually when you take your speaker to a local shop they actually just ship it out the back door to Santon.

So you have to find out if there's a kit available for your speaker AND if the money makes sense! A pair of vintage Celestion alnicos from the '60's would make sense. A modern Jensen, (which isn't even really a Jensen since that factory became a parking lot years ago! Fender bought the name and gave it to some Italian speaker company so that they could legally claim they were 'Jensens'!) would probably not be worth it at all.

I'm not saying that you won't find somebody out there who will do it and at a price you like. I'm just saying that a LOT of guys have been down this road before! We're glad its YOU spending the time and not us!:smile:

We would appreciate it if you find something that you post it here for the rest of us, of course!:smilie_flagge17:

:food-smiley-004:


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

There are a bunch of things that can go wrong with a speaker. I am sure I am not the only one here who has a pair of hi-fi speakers where the foam surround on the woofers has decomposed and left you with a cone that hangs loosely, flopping around. But that is a foam surround problem, not a problem with either the cone or the voice coil. 

Should a speaker consist of an entirely paper cone that is affixed to the speaker basket, then problems with the cone itself (e.g., badly punctured or torn), or with the voice coil, would necessitate replacement of the entire cone, not just the surround.

If something has blown the voice coil (and it is really just a fuse that can go pffft when asked to carry too much current and heat) then the cone may not have to be replaced, but it certainly has to be removed in order to replace the voice coil.

Finally, a speaker can be nonfunctional simply because the free-hanging leads that connect the speaker lugs to the voice coil have fractured. This would normally be the least intrusive repair to make because it would be less likely to require a removal of the cone/coil and complete overhaul of the speaker.

One of the things that is critical to speaker performance is the clearance /thickness of the voice coil within the magnet gap. Highly efficient speakers (i.e., much louder for the same size and magnet weight with the same wattage input) have a smaller gap between the voice coil and the surrounding magnet structure. A smaller gap, on the other hand, requires that voice coil - which is really a tube and the wire wrapped around it - to be positioned flawlessly so that it moves like a precise piston, with NO wiggle room and no lateral movement. This involves not only positioning of the coil structure, but the "spider" surrounding it, and the cone too. NOTHING can be permitted to move that sucker off of a pure forward/backward path. If it is not positioned precisely, you run the risk of not only unpleasant distortion when the coil bumps up against the magnet or grinds against any dust/dirt in the gap, but of producing friction-generated heat from rubbing, which is certain to burn out your coil once more. 

Some 30 odd years ago, I bought a nice little speaker from JBL that had some dirt in the gap. Sounded awful. I contacted them, and their reply was to simply return the speaker and they'd send another in its place. I did, and that replacement has served me well for over 32 years. I doubt that a recone and gap cleaning would have done so.

The structure that the voice coil of the original is mounted on has certain dimensions, and the wire used to make it is assumed to have a certain thickness, insulation, heat resistance, and other properties. The weight, rigidity, etc., of the voice-coil structure is every bit as important to the eventual sound as the cone is.

What this means in realistic terms is that any repair involving the coil positioning (and the comments above indicate that the coil structure can be implicated even when the problem is not with the coil specifically) needs to be done by someone who is skilled enough to reposition that voice coil with the needed precision. If the voice coil itself is burnt out, then they not only need to be able to reposition the replacement, but have an exact replacement too.

At one level, an expensive speaker seems to be the very thing that warrants repair. At another level, the pricier the speaker, the more difficult it may be to restore to original state, and the more critical it becomes to seek the very best help in doing so. In which case, Bill's comments are apropos: maybe it's better to just buy a new one.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

mhammer said:


> Finally, a speaker can be nonfunctional simply because the free-hanging leads that connect the speaker lugs to the voice coil have fractured. This would normally be the least intrusive repair to make because it would be less likely to require a removal of the cone/coil and complete overhaul of the speaker.


This is what I was writing about in my post.

I managed to do the repair myself.

Dave


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## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

This thread had me thinking of Ted Weber since the exchange rate is favourable right now. I was surprised to find out he's no longer offering re-coning services "at this time". He used to re-cone his Weber brand speakers for $25 USD plus S&H. Wild Bill makes a good case for why this service is going the way of the Dodo bird. I'm consistantly impressed by the Eminence speakers. American made, excellent quality speakers for about a $100, is really hard to beat. 

Shawn.


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## vds5000 (Apr 14, 2008)

Rugburn said:


> This thread had me thinking of Ted Weber since the exchange rate is favourable right now. I was surprised to find out he's no longer offering re-coning services "at this time". He used to re-cone his Weber brand speakers for $25 USD plus S&H. Wild Bill makes a good case for why this service is going the way of the Dodo bird. I'm consistantly impressed by the Eminence speakers. American made, excellent quality speakers for about a $100, is really hard to beat.
> 
> Shawn.


I've got a couple of Eminence Legends in my Avatar and I think they sound great.


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