Speaker refoaming

[MasterBlaster]

Ok folks, just a little questionnaire here.

For those of you that have refoamed speakers, could you share a bit about it?

For example:

• What howtos on the net did you find the most useful?
• What are the most important things to remember when refoaming
• Where's the best place to find the surrounds, glue etc
• Is shimming necessary?

I'm sure alot more will pop to mind when you are thinking about it....

[Reverend]

I can only comment on the surrounds, I have never replaced the cap too.  I've tried two different methods.  One involving a 9 volt battery and one without.  The toughest job I had was redoing a pair of 15" woofers in an old pair of Heathkit's.  The problem is that once you remove the surround material, the outer edge of the cone sits lower then the metal basket.  So what do you do?  I found one suggestion online of connecting a 9 volt battery to the terminals so that the diaphragm would push out the cone enough to make it easy to align.  After looking into different possibilities this is the way I went.

I found this advice on another forum and I figured 9 volts couldn't really do any harm.  I think you'd do more harm trying to shim the cone (in this case close to a 1/2") to be level with the basket.

[bmwr75]

I use a AA battery (1.5 volts) to center the voice coil.

Here's a link to an AudioKarma thread on refoaming speakers.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20643

I've bought all refoaming kits from Orange County Speaker repair.  There are probably cheaper places, but these kits come with everything you need and good instructions too.

http://www.speakerrepair.com/