Replace Speaker Surrounds

This is a little job that some may find useful.

Back in the late 70s I made some 'rough and ready' loudspeakers using some rather nice twin-cone 6" speakers from Radiospares. One got damaged and I replaced it, on 4 January 1981 (the date was written inside the box).

I found them in my dad's loft, but the surrounds had almost completely perished. It took a month or so to arrive but for not much money I got a pair of replacement generic surrounds. Note that the coil suspension on each speaker was intact.

I fitted them to the cones using contact adhesive, then glued the hard rubber mounting rings in place to hold the cones in alignment (some careful pulling was needed to ensure the coils weren't rubbing).

I recycled the crude boxes and will make nice new MDF ones the same volume (I measured the old ones).

If anyone has a late 70s or early 90s Radiospares catalogue, the item number is 249 031, 6" 8R wide range dual cone speaker. I'd be interested to see any information about them,

was that when it was a single volume, green I think, or had it gone to 4 or 5 by then?

The brand is identified as ‘NEUTRAL’ … but sadly no further information here: **LINK**

https://africa.rsdelivers.com/product/neutral/speaker-65-in-8-ohm/0249031

MichaelG.

Neil, here you go, they were still selling them in 1985, this is from the July-Oct catalogue.

And one of the whole page.
I can email you higher resolution scans if the forum has compressed these too much to be legible.

I've repaired a couple of speakers myself with new foam surrounds, it's a bit fiddly but easy enough is anyone is interested themselves. I found lots of clothes-pegs to come in handy.
I used This Outfit in The Netherlands, but it was pre-Brexit, so I'm not sure how long shipping will take these days
https://speakerrepairshop.nl/en/foam-surrounds/vifa/g-10000053#.V-sFnjRrhhE

They even supply a useful video to give some idea of the process.
Mine were JPW, and only needed the outer suspension foam renewing.



There is debate about whether foam or rubber is the best material to use, but it seems to depend on how close you live to the sea.

Bill

Thanks Bill, that's marvellous!

I don't think we have had that sort of music on the forum before

Neil

Single volume, wasn't each edition a different colour? Purple, green, turquoise...

If I helped out in my dad's shop, I could earn 'credits' towards getting things added to his orders

Neil

Neil,

Are they still as loud as before?

The RS catalogue used to arrive in our plant by the pallet load, every maintenance foreman had their own copy although they shared an office and every building had its own maintenance team. The maintenance supervision was an electrical, millwright, jig fitting, pipe fitting and welding Forman, so five copies in every area then add in facilities engineering, the buyers and stores it all added up to a lot of copies. My wife does not understand loudspeakers and I have had to move on a pair of Celestion Ditton 15XRs and a pair of Castle Conways, she doesn’t seem to mind the Sonos sound bar and Play Ones, I suspect my ears are well beyond hifi after 40 years of megadecibel rock music and equally loud motorcycles.

Mike

Yes, the catalogue was still a single volume then, and about 1½cm thick, changing colour as a new one came out every 4 months.
I've just a couple left from 1984 & 5; I used to get them as they were discarded by our GPO/BT planners.

By 2004, my copy shows it had expanded to 7 volumes.

At some point, it was available as both paper and CD, but the only CD I have left is from Sept 2000; unfortunately, it wasn't just a plain CD, but needed its own browser/program installing on the host PC, so I can't get it to run under W10.
My old XP netbook still works with it, and shows that by 2000 that particular speaker had been discontinued, but with no further history in the database search.

I'd forgotten about the soundtrack to that video, as I had it on mute when I posted it earlier.

Bill

Hi, I relined my disco cabs with new and better quality acoustic wadding back in 2019, what I put in them when I first made them was a cheaper compromise as the better stuff was quite expensive back in the early 70's. My late brother and I, bought the loudspeaker units at a special price of £12.50, which were advertised in Practical Electronics by G.W. Smith & Co (Radio) Ltd. in Tottenham Court Road London, they were advertised as Goodmans Axiom 301, but were actually 401, we got a couple of new Garrard SP III decks for £10.25 each as well while we were there.

At the same time as renewing the acoustic wadding, I decided to take off the front grills to inspect the cones and the surrounds and clean any dust that may have accumulated, but after 47 years they were still in good order.

They still sound good after nearly 49 years and are improved by the new wadding, just sad that my late brother never heard a sound from them.

I though these cabs I knocked up, supposably temporary, were rather crude Neil, these contain a twin Axiom 10 but I had to replace the cheaper tweeters units awhile ago as the one in the other cab lost its voice.

These were made in about 1987 from some ex-display panels from various dismantled units and a fair amount of other off cuts from Texas, which became Homebase, but they sound good also, so I guess that's why I've never made any better looking ones and although there's a chunk broken out of the tweeter part of cone, it doesn't seem to effect the sound, one will have to excuse the gutter bolts holding the main unit in, as that's all I had which were long enough at the time.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 11/01/2022 23:39:43

I don't know., and I can't remember the original sound very well. I'm going to experiment with an enclosure and adding a crossover and tweeter and see what happens.

I like seeing old speakers. There's an ancient 12" Goodmans up in the loft.

Actually, I like speakers...

I've just given my brother a 2x12 cab I made for two McKenzie PA speakers I was given in the late 80s. Served me well for a bass rig with a 2x12 'Phoenix' cab with two Celestions in it. Middle one in this pic:

These days my main cab is a 4 ohm GR Bass AT212 Slim. A thing of remarkable quality.

With me now is my 'practice and small gigs cab' - a Phil Jones Bass C2, which has just two 5" speakers but can take 250W and goes down to 32Hz... it sounds amazing but isn't hugely loud, even with 130W from the Elf going in to it.

I also gave my brother this wee amp I made maybe ten or more years ago. Four 4" speakers. I improved it greatly by removing excess wadding and adding a rear port, then recently added a 3D printed port tube which made it even better. No calculations and only tested by ear/doing A/B comparisons!

Hmm... I never realised I had so many speakers (plenty more besides, mostly smaller fortunately) this might be something of an obsession...

Neil

Hi Neil, looks like good gear and the way they are stacked reminds me of days in the early to mid 70's, when going to see some of the top bands of that time, playing in our local Corn exchange, one of which was Status Que who I saw twice, their stacks of WEM speakers and 100W slave amps, on both side of the stage, were quite impressive, there were others like Hawkwind who I saw a year or so after their Silver Machine release and Wizzard, who were extremely loud but worth the attendance, but I can't remember the gear either of those used. Many of the bands used Marshall gear and some had Orange. Like your the guitars, I did have a bass guitar once as I do like a good bit of bass, but soon found out that I could never get the hang of playing it, so I sold it and bought a CB radio when they were all the rage.

Now I'm not embarking on a battle of speakers or anything, but I do have a fondness of them and here's a photo of my left hand cluster, which together with the right hand side, contain 18 speaker units in all, which are all driven with a Technics SU-3050 amp but this is not to make the loudest sound possible, although they can be deafening, but the speakers may well all cover the same frequency, but produce some different tones, or a colouration of the sound if you like, and one song I like to play fairly loud through them, because I really like the guitar work, is Tina Turner's "Better Be Good To Me" which to me brings out every aspect of the guitars sound and how it's played and I think it really feel as if I'm listening to them as a live performance.

In the cluster are my Axiom 401 Disco cab on top of which are Fane J44 horns which also contain the crossovers for 4 or 16 ohm configuration, the cream one with an Axiom 10 and a MCM Audio Select: 53-1080 tweeter with crossover inside and fixed at 8 ohm, on top of which is one of a pair of Dynatron three speaker system with crossovers inside at 8 ohm, which were given to me many years ago, these are connected in series to produce 16 ohm configuration, which in conjunction with the Disco cabs and horns at 16 ohm give a load to the amplifier within the minimum allowed. The amp will allow all speakers to be used, or just the main Disco cabs & horns alone, or the Dynatron & cream ones alone. The Disco cabs can be used without the Fane horn and crossovers if so desired, by just connecting straight to them.

Here is info of the Technics SU-3050 amp. (audio-database.com) for anyone who it may interest.

Regards Nick.

I was going to make some speakers with concrete enclosures many years ago but a friend said they likely wouldn’t sound any better than a decent pair from Richer sounds so I didn’t bother! Just as well really as I don’t use the ones I bought very often.

A noble and interesting exercise, Neil ... and they presumably have sentimental value

But [ dare I mention ? ] last week, I bought a pair of Mission 760 speakers [in pretty fair condition] from the local Charity Shop for the paltry sum of £5

MichaelG.

Hi MichaelG, sounds as if they were going for a song. Oh! there might be a pun in that!

Regards Nick.

Vic's mention of concrete reminds me that my tutor at university in about 1975 had speakers mounted in, as far as memory serves, 8in dia open ended glazed clay sewer pipes (new) about 4ft long mounted with speaker in the top and the bottom end spaced a couple of inches above the floor for the sound to get out.

Would make a good subject for discussion down the pub!

Concrete? Try Trace Elliott, they are even heavier...

I have a pair of Kef Coda 7s that are excellent and a pair of Philips W00X (with passive radiators) which are remarkably good.

However, I need three pairs - bedroom, office and workshop, so making new enclosures for these oldies and adding tweeters will be fun. My brother also has some old speakers from the loft, his were OK but tatty enclosures. We bought two sets of three 'squareish' shelves from B&Q as the two larger sizes are ideal as the basis of enclosures. I'll add an inner baffle to avoid resonance from a square enclosure and get the recommended volume. I get the big ones, he has the middle size and we get one little one each.

They should look good when done.