Foam Surround Repair?

[spiffnme]

I have a 15 year old pair of Snell Acoustics Type K/II speakers. Love them to death, and they still sound terrific, but the foam surrounds need replacing. Anyone know of a place in the LA area that I can get this done? I really don't want to do it myself, as I'd likely mess it up, and I don't want to risk hurting/ruining my speakers. (yes, I've been told it's easy, but still...)

[David Meek]

There was a "foam repair" thread posted several months ago. I'm not sure which forum though. Thank goodness for search engines.

[ThomasW]

http://www.speakerrepair.com/index.html

[spiffnme]

Thanks for the help guys.

[NonSense]

spiffnme

I was in the same situation a couple of years ago with a pair of 15+ year old speakers that I still liked. I investigated the foam repair option, but received alot of negative feedback from some people who I would consider a reliable source of advice. The general feedback I received was that the foam on LF driver was an integral part of the
driver unit (provides mechanical loading) and a poor fix (sloppy use of adhesive) or dramatic change in the foam desity will adversly effect the native response of the driver unit and the overal sound characteristic of the speaker. Buying a replacement driver was not possible as they were no longer manufactured.

Since I was planning on upgrading my speakers in the near future, I decided to purchase a reasonable priced pair of aftermarket LF drivers that were able to be placed in the same enclosure. (not much more than the price to do the foam fix) This allowed me to bridge the gap, until I made a major upgrade to a set of used speakers I stumbled across. Anyway, I'm sure I made the right choice for my situation and level of speakers that I wanted to have repaired. For me, after 15 years, they didn't owe me anything. It was also a great excuse to justify an upgrade. Who can argue with the foam hanging off a driver unit.

[ekkoville]

I had a thread recently regarding foam on a 13 year old pair of speakers. I found a repair kit that said it match exactly. I also doubted the fix, considering only one needed repair. I have since decided to order the driver from the manufacturer for $60 per driver. Not a bad deal since they are the exact same unit. If the repair was a success, but didn't match the acoustics of the unrepaired driver, I would have been wasting my time and money.

[spiffnme]

I found a place not too far from me to do the job. $56 for both.

If they sound like crap afterwards I'll be pretty darn upset. I really doubt I can find new drivers to replace them. I love my Snells!

[ekkoville]

Hey, I love Snells. My center channel is a ten year old CC1. I would love to match it with something current. I browsed around their site last night actually, and kind of liked the LCR7. Snells seem to a tough brand to find localy anymore.

[soundhound]

Right after tech school 20+ years ago I started in a pro shop in Minneapolis, my first job was reconeing speakers. We had a couple of books from vendors that would allow us to replace driver components with exact duplicate parts if not oem. Lots of peavy's, jbl's,ev's and the likes so I would suspect the guys you went to will do a good job.

[whoaru99]

I would be more concerned about the sound quality from changing the whole driver (unless exact replacement) than I would be about putting on new surround material.

Granted, if you go from foam to some type of rubber, yeah, it'll probably change some. How much and will you notice a big difference, hard to say...