Speaker Graveyard - Projects that resurrected the dead

Last summer I decided to learn how to refoam woofers. My first project was a pair of Infinity RS-2001 bookshelf speakers I picked up from Craigslist for $30 and the foams had turned to powder which is pretty much a guaranteed issue on any speaker that's 30+ years old. While the refoam turned out great, the plastic beauty rings that cover the mounting screws were a PITA to remove. They used way too much glue and the rings could't be saved. I had to replace them with the rubberized cork rings which don't look as good. With grille covers it doesn't matter. The foam glue was also too abundant and rigid so prepping them for refoam was time consuming and really sucked. To the point where I'm probably going to think twice before taking on another pair of Infinitys from the late 80s to early 90s.

I didn't bother with messing around with the crossover on this one. It wasn't worth it. The speakers weren't some gem that deserved it or would I be able to recover the extra cost of the caps. It was a cheap educational project and I ended up flipping these to a buddy who wanted some cheap bookshelf speakers for about what I had into them for parts.

A couple weeks later a guy I used to work with messages me and asks if I want a pair of Klipsch Fortes for free. Hell yes! He's moving and is about to take them to the dump because one of the speaker terminals broke off years ago. One dust cap was missing and one was loose, but the walnut cabinets just needed some oil to look good. I had terminal posts in my spare parts bin that were direct replacements. So this sounded like an hour repair max. I told him that even in this condition they were still worth several hundred dollars and offered to pay him. He declined and just wanted them gone.

So a little history on the original Klipsch Forte. From what I can tell it was introduced in early to mid 1986. These were dated early August 1986. Originally the crossovers were mounted to the back of the terminal cups in an ugly cluster of parts held together with an excessive amount of hot glue. These were assembled by hand in Hope, AR, and the first thing I thought of was I wouldn't want to be the guy that had to solder and mount that mess. Early in production of the original Forte Klipsch had a moment of clarity and started putting the crossover on a board and mounting it to the cabinet. This was confirmed by a conversation I had with someone who had a pair built a couple months after mine. (who also had broken speaker terminals) The Forte II came out in mid to late 1989, so for most of the 3 year production of the original Forte, the crossover was mounted on a separate board.

Original crossover:


Because the crossover was mounted on the terminal cup, the project got unexpectedly more complex. I had already planned on replacing the capacitors, but the old crossover had to be partially destroyed to remove. Because I don't believe in messing with the old iron, the inductors and autotransformer had to be carefully removed. This is when I realized one of my most valuable tools was an exacto knife with a chisel head tip. These are also really good for cleaning off excess glue for a refoam.

I used ClarityCaps for the new capacitors since I had experience with them before. They aren't insanely priced and sound better than Solens and some others I've tried over the years. I'm going from memory but I believe the replacement caps were valued at 1 and 1.5uF, so they were cheap and not huge. I needed to replace one resistor so I used a Mundorf that wasn't too expensive given the quantity I needed.

Installing the new crossover:


Once Klipsch got away from metal horns they used Kydex for the tweeter diaphragms in many of their models. This was an acrylic /PVC material. I always thought these sounded a little rough and spitty, especially at higher volumes, even back when I sold Klipsch back during the version II years. So I went ahead and replaced these with the Crites titanium domes which turned out to extend the top end a few kHz while sounding a lot smoother.



I've got a few other projects done I'll post here when I get time

 

Altec Lansing 874a Segovia

I was kind of excited to pick these up, not having much experience with the vintage Altec Lansing speakers. These were strange in a lot of ways. Despite being a sealed cabinet design, they were considered a bookshelf speaker in the early 1970's made to compete with the JBL L100. They used a massive 10 inch woofer in a 12 inch cast frame and these woofers felt like they were at least 30lbs each. From what I could tell, Altec only made this woofer for this speaker and never used it again in anything else. They also didn't use a horn, but a Phillips dome tweeter that was popular back then. There were mid and tweeter output controls mounted on the back next to the speaker terminals. I later found that having them on the back was kind of inconvenient, as opposed to the front, but I like that they had them.

When I got them the foams were gone and someone tried to fix them with a sticky mess of glue of which got on one of the cones. The real walnut veneer had quite a few scratches on the tops, and the tweeters had been replaced with some old Cerwin Vega Bullet tweeters.




I took apart one of the speakers and removed the crossover to see what was going on there, expecting to replace some electrolytics, but the original caps were poly and still measured fine. So I ended up not changing the crossover. These weren't cheaply made speakers. From what I could tell these ran about $700 in 1971 which was pretty expensive.



I reinstalled new woofer foams and found some replacement Phillips tweeters on Ebay. I used these for a couple of months in my office and they sounded acceptable but didn't impress me all that much so I sold them. Despite all the work, it was fun bringing these back to life so someone else could enjoy them.

 

Awesome to see some cool restoration projections on here, but also can we take a moment to appreciate that @crazychile has a fire extinguisher in his workspace?

(now do yourself a favour and flip it end over end a couple times to loosen the powder; almost nobody does this and you can actually hear the powder slide/thunk around inside if it's been compacted; those extinguishers are no use if all you get is the gas expelled with none of the powder)

 

I have a few more projects to post once I have time to find pictures and put down a few thoughts, but thought I'd share a story that happened to me a couple of weeks ago...

The father of a buddy of mine is retired and loves to go to garage sales with his wife. They're hard core about this and will plan out a day in advance the most efficient route to make sure they can get in as many in a day as possible, and they'll do this 2-3 days a week. I've known him for 35 years and he knows that I'm a stereo nut thats always on the lookout for interesting stuff. So it's not unusual for him to shoot me a text with photos asking about something being worthwhile to pick up. He's also a great negotiator, and has gotten a few decent things. Nothing like finding vintage McIntosh or anything similar, but more like getting a 20 year old Yamaha receiver for $15 and stuff like that.

So a couple of weeks ago he shoots me a text with a picture of some Bose 901 (series 3) speakers and says they're $30, is it a good deal? I ask if they have the EQ or stands...he says no. I tell him they're from 1976ish and absolutely will need new foams, (grilles are stapled on so it isn't easy to check) theres 9 drivers per speaker it's gonna be a pain in the ass....basically, I'd pass on the deal. It isn't worth it.

An hour later I get another text saying that he had already bought them. I'm sure he was expecting me to say he got the deal of a lifetime until I pissed on his parade. But then he says he's accepted his loss, and not only is he giving them to me, but they're already sitting on my porch.

So I'm thinking WTF am I going to do with these? There is absolutely nothing alluring about taking them in as a project. I don't want them, I don't want to invest the time working on them. Not to be a snob but I don't think I'd even want these in the garage even if they were fully functional. I put Watco Rejuvenating Oil on the walnut cabinets and they didn't look bad. I thought I'd put an ad on Facebook Marketplace, disclose the issues so people knew they were a project, and see if someone was interested. A couple hours later I'd made enough to surprise my friends dad with his $30 back, plus a few bucks for myself. When I gave him the money I told him to never buy any more garage sale stereo stuff without consulting me first.

 

The fire extinguisher just sort of ended up there. I took your advice and flipped it around a bit. No thunks but it might be sliding around inside. The meter says its good but its probably more than 10 yrs old. I'll probably just replace it and take the old one out to my friends personal rifle range and see what kind of carnage I can cause with some military armor piercing .223. If that is uneventful I'll try my buddys Tommy gun. Thats always entertaining.

 

Awesome thread!

Because my Father's old Sansui SP-2000 speaker drivers have cloth surrounds, I fired them up and all is OK! As a kid, I never knew there were 6 drivers in there:



I have been reading, however, that the cloth surrounds use sealant that freezes up over time.

This needs to be cleaned with acetone and a couple coats of DOT 4 brake fluid (applied with a Q-tip) to get the woofers moving freely again.

Anyone here have experience with this?
Do you have to clean with acetone first or can you just apply the brake fluid?
(Most just say to use brake fluid and they don't mention the acetone step.)

 

Squawkers!

 

Some before and after of my Cornwalls. Sanded them with 400 grit then used watco rejuvenating oil. There's still some blemishes but they look much better than before.






I didn't take before or afters of the sides but they were about the same as the tops.

Also redid the grilles with cloth from Crites and some black ribbon pull tabs. These turned out fantastic and really make the speakers look incredible.

 

I never knew of that issue so thats something new I learned today. I figured cloth surrounds would out last everything else.

I'm not a chemist but my guess is that the acetone softens up the stiff sealant and the brake fluid is absorbed and keeps them from re stiffening after the acetone evaporates.

Most refoaming tutorials demonstrate using alcohol or mineral spirits. I haven't had much success with mineral spirits, but when rubbing alcohol doesn't remove the old glue I have used acetone. It definitely works but its kind of the firebomb approach because it could potentially go too far. So I only mention that because no matter what you're working on you have to be careful with acetone.

 

I can never seem to get lucky enough to score something like these...

 

I kinda like the scruffy look, it gives it character. Wabi-Sabi you know? You knocked it out of the park with that speaker grill though, that looks amazing.

 

Thanks so much! I totally agree, these have been around a while but they still look pretty good. They also match better with the other old furniture/wood we have in our home; an 8ft dining table made in the 1890s in Grand Rapids, an antique Schrank from Berlin (brought back by my father-in-law when he was stationed in west Germany), and the original oak floors. The rosewood Burl KEFs I had previously stuck out like a sore thumb.

 

I ordered a new Klipsch authorized capacitor kit from Jim at JEM Performance Audio, a Klipsch Heritage repair shop. Super nice guy.

The stock 4uf capacitor on my left channel was measuring 5.37uf, 34% too high! The right channel was 4.8uf, or 20% too high.

The 2uf caps were within spec, but one was leaking oil slightly.

I was a little disappointed with the mids when I first got them, but I got used to it. After replacing the caps (new ones all measured within 1% of spec) the mids are BACK, and damn do they sound good!

I'm super happy with these speakers.

 

Boston Acoustics “A” Series

I've got a soft spot in my heart for Boston Acoustics speakers from the first decade of their existence. The first time I ever heard a decent stereo was when I got my first apartment with a college buddy and he had a pair of Boston A150 speakers with a Denon, Carver, Adcom system. Then coincidentally I met a friend of a friend around the same time that had a pair of A400 speakers and NAD electronics. Both of these systems gave me the bug for good stereo. Then later when I began selling Hi-Fi in 1989, the store I worked at carried BA, and the A70 mk II became one of my favorite cheap speakers back then.

Boston Acoustics A200
So in the late Winter of this year someone locally had some A200s up for sale for pretty cheap and I went and picked them up. These were in great shape and had recently had the woofer foams replaced. Nothing really needed to be done to them except that I wanted to mess with the crossover and replace the old screw terminals with 5 way binding posts.

The A200 was the original flagship model for BA. (Later replaced by the A400). Bostons approach was to create a thin, sealed box speaker with a wide front baffle. These were meant to be put up against a wall. Set up correctly they had deep tight bass, but if you set them out a foot or two from the wall the bass disappeared pretty quickly.

I decided this time I would replace the capacitors with some Jensen caps, since there were 4 or 5 caps per side to replace and they were pretty affordable. I hadn't used Jensen before but it seemed like people were pretty happy with them. The crossover was in 2 parts. The tweeter section was mounted near the back plate and mid/woofer were on a board glued to the inside base of the cabinet. The tweeter and mids are fused.

Based on the date of the Seas tweeter, this pair was made in 1979. I think I read somewhere that these were originally somewhere in the $1100 - $1300 price range. There might have been different finishes. These are in a real oak veneer. There was an A200 mkII that came later when BA decided to start making all their own components in house. I found a schematic for the mkII online and it's completely different from the original.

The cabinet is really solid. There are visible screws all over the front and back baffles so at first I thought I could remove the front baffle for easy access to get to the crossover. But they're glued to the internal bracing with the screws used to pull the baffle against the cross bracing during construction. so these things aren't coming apart without being destroyed.



I kind of spaced off taking many pictures of these when they were apart. I got pretty absorbed in the crossover rebuild and then they were just done and reassembled.

They sound pretty decent. I can't say that the new crossover made a huge difference but the sound was a little smeared before. The bass did get a little tighter. While against the wall I was able to toe them in a few inches and they do a nice solid image while keeping the bass. I think these are around 90dB efficient and not a great fit for my Schiit Aegir. More power would be beneficial. But these aren't my main speakers.

I'm tempted to redo the crossover to eliminate the fuses which would probably clean up the sound a little. Currently they sit in my basement until my new office is built and then they'll probably get paired with my old Adcom GFA-535II which I might recap this Winter.

Boston Acoustics A150
I picked these up as part of an old NAD/Thorens system I bought off of Facebook Marketplace. The woofer foams were shot but I really wanted to get these running again since I hadn't heard a pair since the 80's. I replaced the foams but didn't touch the crossover. These sounded really well balanced and if I had more room I would have kept them. After I enjoyed them for a few weeks I sold them off to a friend who had a mid level pair of 90's era Definitive Technology towers. The Def Techs are a more exciting speaker upon first listen, but he loves the A150s more because they're more resolving and versatile with more types of music.

 

What are the dimensions on those? They are remarkably thin.

 

The A150s are 30.5 x 16.5 x 8

The A200s are 41 x 21 x 6.

 

That's actually not half bad all things considered, and certainly a lot less intrusive when fitting into a room's decor. I know my partner would certainly appreciate that aesthetic more than the typical box/tower speaker.

 

Pair of A120 in CO for $45

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649915789-boston-acoustics-a120-vintage-speakers/

 

The A120 was still a current model when I started selling BA in 1989. It was a 2 way with passive woofer and not quite as good as the A150, but totally worth $45 even if they need a little work.

The one to look out for if they pop up locally is the A70 series 2. Not as punchy as the A120 but a more balanced all around speaker.