Repairing an expensive speaker

[John]

I am repairing two 15" Tannoys of the Gold series. A $5k unit if we
could get them.

Un oscillation in a cassette deck I was using, produced a very lowed
sound that damaged the speakers.

One of them has 6 turns of the voice coil, lose and can be glued back.

On the old days I used to repair speakers using the same type of glue
that was used on the assembling of models. A type of glue that use
acetone as a solvent.
Today we have better types of glue like epoxy and I believe the harder
the glue the better the performance, the disadvantage is that using
epoxy will make a future repair very difficult.

Any suggestions ?

The coil on the second speaker is open and in very bad shape. I am
looking for a replacement.

Tannoy does not carry parts for this type of speaker but there is a
place in England that will sell me a cone assembly for about $300 usd.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I would contact Annoy and ask exactly which adhesive it uses. Don't
substitute on the assumption that your choice would be superior to Annoy's.

 

[GregS]

In article <i14p13$usq$1@news.eternal-september.org>, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

I would contact Annoy and ask exactly which adhesive it uses. Don't
substitute on the assumption that your choice would be superior to Annoy's.

To add to my other post, if he wants orginal, then stay orginal.
Also both units should be the identical.

greg

 

[Meat Plow]

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:40:20 -0400, John <Ya@you.com>wrote:

I am repairing two 15" Tannoys of the Gold series. A $5k unit if we
could get them.

Un oscillation in a cassette deck I was using, produced a very lowed
sound that damaged the speakers.

One of them has 6 turns of the voice coil, lose and can be glued back.

On the old days I used to repair speakers using the same type of glue
that was used on the assembling of models. A type of glue that use
acetone as a solvent.
Today we have better types of glue like epoxy and I believe the harder
the glue the better the performance, the disadvantage is that using
epoxy will make a future repair very difficult.

Any suggestions ?

The coil on the second speaker is open and in very bad shape. I am
looking for a replacement.

Tannoy does not carry parts for this type of speaker but there is a
place in England that will sell me a cone assembly for about $300 usd.

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

 

[Ron]

On 08/07/2010 20:15, root wrote:

Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

--
I am using the free version of SPAMfighter.
We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam.
SPAMfighter has removed 1397 of my spam emails to date.
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[root]

Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 19:15:18 +0000 (UTC), root <NoEMail@home.org>wrote:

Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job.

Trust me, it isn't an easy fix. Just what fucking experience do you
think I might not have had with reconing. Don't make assumptions.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:48:38 +0100, Ron
<ron@lunevalleyaudio.com>wrote:

On 08/07/2010 20:15, root wrote:
Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

The 10 minute recone part really bothers me. Sure with production line
jigs, shims, guides and people who do maybe a 100 per day that is a
tangible goal. But for an average Joe buying reconing parts and being
successful is not the average outcome. Sure there are exceptions so if
you want to try it on your own good luck.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3t2ats.t4n.19.4@news.alt.net...

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:48:38 +0100, Ron
ron@lunevalleyaudio.com>wrote:

On 08/07/2010 20:15, root wrote:
Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

The 10 minute recone part really bothers me. Sure with production line
jigs, shims, guides and people who do maybe a 100 per day that is a
tangible goal. But for an average Joe buying reconing parts and being
successful is not the average outcome. Sure there are exceptions so if
you want to try it on your own good luck.

Interestingly, I was discussing exactly this issue with the owner of the
music shop that I do a lot of work for, just this week. He rents a lot of
biiiiigggg PA equipment out - kilowatt amps and 4 x 15 bass cabs and such.
These get damaged by inept users all the time, apparently. I suggested that
it must cost him a fortune in replacement speakers, but he said "Oh no - I
just re-cone them". I asked him how long he had been doing this and he said
years, but I had never seen this going on in his shop. Anyway, I asked him
how long it took, and how hard a job it was, and did he have lots of
specialist shims and feeler gauges and jigs and what have you. Nope, he
said. He reckons it takes him but a few minutes (literally) to do the job.
He says that the most time consuming part is making sure that all the crud
from the burnt up voice coil, is removed from the airgap. He uses a
combination of compressed air, and sticky tape to do this. As to centering
the new cone's voice coil, he says that most replacement kits come with a
set of four plastic spacer shims, but that many modern designs are
fundamentally self - centering anyway. He reckoned that it was basically a
piece of piss job that just needed a little care, and that much bollocks was
talked on the subject. I might ask him to let me know next time he's got one
to do, as I would like to watch him at work ...

Arfa

 

[Grant]

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:01:39 -0400, Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:48:38 +0100, Ron
ron@lunevalleyaudio.com>wrote:

On 08/07/2010 20:15, root wrote:
Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

The 10 minute recone part really bothers me. Sure with production line
jigs, shims, guides and people who do maybe a 100 per day that is a
tangible goal. But for an average Joe buying reconing parts and being
successful is not the average outcome. Sure there are exceptions so if
you want to try it on your own good luck.

A little OT...

Took me some hours to resolder bad joint between cone wire and the flex
wire, by the time I found and arranged some foam rubber to lift the cone
outwards enough to gain access, clean off some of the black insulator
stuff very carefully to find the wires underneath and the bad solder
joint. The speakers date back about 30 years.

Then many attempts to get a good solder joint, the low-mid 7" speaker
has very fine wire to the cone. But the repair done with much patience,
and has lasted a few years now

It's worth the effort to try repair expensive speaker drivers, at worst,
you're still stuck with a bad speaker needing replacement. Nothing but
time to lose?

Grant.

 

[root]

Ron <ron@lunevalleyaudio.com> wrote:

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

Not at all, the voice coil, spider, and the cone itself
are not affected. Sorry if I missed something in the
original post.

>

 

[John]

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:56:33 -0400, Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 19:15:18 +0000 (UTC), root <NoEMail@home.org>wrote:


Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job.

Trust me, it isn't an easy fix. Just what fucking experience do you
think I might not have had with reconing. Don't make assumptions.

This has been a very interesting and informative discussion but until
now nobody has answer my original question that was the type of glue
to use to glue the coil to the 2" tube.
Since we want the sound to come out of the cone, the connection
between the cone and the coil should be as rigid as possible and that
suggests the use of epoxy but what about heat dissipation and how to
remove a coil glued with epoxy to the tube, if some thing goes wrong?

 

[bob u]

On 7/9/2010 8:56 AM, John wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:56:33 -0400, Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com


This has been a very interesting and informative discussion but until
now nobody has answer my original question that was the type of glue
to use to glue the coil to the 2" tube.
Since we want the sound to come out of the cone, the connection
between the cone and the coil should be as rigid as possible and that
suggests the use of epoxy but what about heat dissipation and how to
remove a coil glued with epoxy to the tube, if some thing goes wrong?

Airflex 400

bob

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---

 

[GregS]

In article <ne9e36h04d1r1cd11os3tsc6ib1oh72j4c@4ax.com>, John <Ya@you.com> wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:56:33 -0400, Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 19:15:18 +0000 (UTC), root <NoEMail@home.org>wrote:


Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job.

Trust me, it isn't an easy fix. Just what fucking experience do you
think I might not have had with reconing. Don't make assumptions.

This has been a very interesting and informative discussion but until
now nobody has answer my original question that was the type of glue
to use to glue the coil to the 2" tube.
Since we want the sound to come out of the cone, the connection
between the cone and the coil should be as rigid as possible and that
suggests the use of epoxy but what about heat dissipation and how to
remove a coil glued with epoxy to the tube, if some thing goes wrong?

If your afraid if something goes wrong, you take the advice and get
somebody to do it.

Airflex 400 is flexible, for surrounds and other repair.

The type of treatment is going to depend on what you have.
Whats the VC made out of, what kind of wire does it have.
How is it wound.
What kind of glue did they use.

By the way, I NEVER work on just one speaker.
Units must be matched for sound.

Try superglue.
Try COIL DOPE. polystyrene plastic dissolved in a solvent, toluene
You really want to use that thermal epoxy don't you.


greg

 

[GregS]

In article <i17cc4$scl$3@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, zekfrivo@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote:

In article <ne9e36h04d1r1cd11os3tsc6ib1oh72j4c@4ax.com>, John <Ya@you.com
wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:56:33 -0400, Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 19:15:18 +0000 (UTC), root <NoEMail@home.org>wrote:


Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job.

Trust me, it isn't an easy fix. Just what fucking experience do you
think I might not have had with reconing. Don't make assumptions.

This has been a very interesting and informative discussion but until
now nobody has answer my original question that was the type of glue
to use to glue the coil to the 2" tube.
Since we want the sound to come out of the cone, the connection
between the cone and the coil should be as rigid as possible and that
suggests the use of epoxy but what about heat dissipation and how to
remove a coil glued with epoxy to the tube, if some thing goes wrong?

If your afraid if something goes wrong, you take the advice and get
somebody to do it.

Airflex 400 is flexible, for surrounds and other repair.

The type of treatment is going to depend on what you have.
Whats the VC made out of, what kind of wire does it have.
How is it wound.
What kind of glue did they use.

By the way, I NEVER work on just one speaker.
Units must be matched for sound.

Try superglue.
Try COIL DOPE. polystyrene plastic dissolved in a solvent, toluene
You really want to use that thermal epoxy don't you.

The former material is going to matter. I have a feeling the
orginal "glue" was enemel, constantly rotated and baked till done.

greg

 

[William Sommerwerck]

This has been a very interesting and informative discussion
but until now nobody has answer my original question that
was the type of glue to use to glue the coil to the 2" tube.

But the question /has/ been answered -- contact the manufacturer and ask it
what the appropriate adhesive is.

You want us to give you the answer you'd like to have -- and I, for one, am
not going to do it. The manufacturer should know best.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 01:45:22 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
<arfa.daily@ntlworld.com>wrote:

"Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3t2ats.t4n.19.4@news.alt.net...
On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:48:38 +0100, Ron
ron@lunevalleyaudio.com>wrote:

On 08/07/2010 20:15, root wrote:
Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

The 10 minute recone part really bothers me. Sure with production line
jigs, shims, guides and people who do maybe a 100 per day that is a
tangible goal. But for an average Joe buying reconing parts and being
successful is not the average outcome. Sure there are exceptions so if
you want to try it on your own good luck.


Interestingly, I was discussing exactly this issue with the owner of the
music shop that I do a lot of work for, just this week. He rents a lot of
biiiiigggg PA equipment out - kilowatt amps and 4 x 15 bass cabs and such.
These get damaged by inept users all the time, apparently. I suggested that
it must cost him a fortune in replacement speakers, but he said "Oh no - I
just re-cone them". I asked him how long he had been doing this and he said
years, but I had never seen this going on in his shop. Anyway, I asked him
how long it took, and how hard a job it was, and did he have lots of
specialist shims and feeler gauges and jigs and what have you. Nope, he
said. He reckons it takes him but a few minutes (literally) to do the job.
He says that the most time consuming part is making sure that all the crud
from the burnt up voice coil, is removed from the airgap. He uses a
combination of compressed air, and sticky tape to do this. As to centering
the new cone's voice coil, he says that most replacement kits come with a
set of four plastic spacer shims, but that many modern designs are
fundamentally self - centering anyway. He reckoned that it was basically a
piece of piss job that just needed a little care, and that much bollocks was
talked on the subject. I might ask him to let me know next time he's got one
to do, as I would like to watch him at work ...

Arfa

I've been around when my buddy Bart reconed some pro-audio speakers.
It all comes down to people doing it the way they have learned. It's
not as easy as you think but it isn't hard either. He chose to buy
specific tools and glues and treatments not relying on kits for shims
and glues. He knew what he was doing and reconed all my speakers.
Never had a re-run because of a botched repair. Hey if you can learn
the essentials and want to give reconing a try go for it. Maybe it's
for you maybe it's not.

 

[Ron]

On 09/07/2010 16:33, TMI wrote:

When voice coils are wound the former which you refer to as a 2" tube,
is placed an a mandrel with an expanding collet. In better speakers,
it is "wet wound" in glue under precise tension onto the former to
create a mechanically homogeneous coil, using a precision "coil
winder" which advances the width of the wire for each turn of the
mandrel. Without the mandrel and the collet, you cannot apply the
correct tension to the wire, assuming you knew what it was.

Old cones are not good cones and become tired, particularly after an
event like you describe. New cones have a break-in period of several
months until the spider and surround stabilize at their nominal
compliance.

Tannoy speakers are high efficiency with relatively small magnets
which point to a tight gap. This is very unforgiving with respect to
egging the coil and former, extra glue from the repair, misalignment,
debris, nonlinearity of the reworked spider, surround and cone.

You do not mention centering the coil in the excursion, which is
critical for low distortion and is 90 degrees away from the shims.
Since this alignment opposes the spring action of the suspension, the
cone and spider must have no glue grooves to the former.

In short, buy the cone kits or better still, ship the drivers to allow
someone who does vintage Tannoy work to install them and preserve
those $5,000.00 speakers through restoration. A top notch shop may
also have a magnet charger to restore the specified flux density to
the gap.

Tell you friend that there are few "Vintage" cassette decks and for
what this repair is going to cost he should look for something newer.

About glue....a bit of acetone can be used (in areas other than the
coil where it may create a shorted turn) to rewet and bond glue that
has cracked. GC Radio and TV Service Cement was the old fashioned
method used by TV repair shops. Real speaker reconers use the OEM
glues.

Adding epoxy to a solvent based glue joint is a cobblers repair.

Using epoxy in place of a solvent cement is better, but still
different. While tougher, epoxy often lacks the Q of a solvent cement
joint that has aged, particularly when mixed and applied by hand which
yields entrapped air and sloppy nonuniform ratios.

These observations do not apply to modern 1KW drivers used in PA
systems and beaten to death every weekend. Your friend's solution is
perfectly valid in this application and a little DEVCON goes a long
way toward a reasonable operating cost.

Tom Maguire
TMI Engineering

Interestingly, a similar discussion has been going on over in
alt.audio.pro.live-sound, tho mainly concerned with repairing cracked
magnets.

I was surprised (after seeing a program on tv - to find out that
ferrites are magnetised _after_ assembly with the motor and basket assembly

Veejo here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN0tmyyC0ak

Ron(UK)

--
I am using the free version of SPAMfighter.
We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam.
SPAMfighter has removed 1438 of my spam emails to date.
Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len

The Professional version does not have this message

 

[TMI]

When voice coils are wound the former which you refer to as a 2" tube,
is placed an a mandrel with an expanding collet. In better speakers,
it is "wet wound" in glue under precise tension onto the former to
create a mechanically homogeneous coil, using a precision "coil
winder" which advances the width of the wire for each turn of the
mandrel. Without the mandrel and the collet, you cannot apply the
correct tension to the wire, assuming you knew what it was.

Old cones are not good cones and become tired, particularly after an
event like you describe. New cones have a break-in period of several
months until the spider and surround stabilize at their nominal
compliance.

Tannoy speakers are high efficiency with relatively small magnets
which point to a tight gap. This is very unforgiving with respect to
egging the coil and former, extra glue from the repair, misalignment,
debris, nonlinearity of the reworked spider, surround and cone.

You do not mention centering the coil in the excursion, which is
critical for low distortion and is 90 degrees away from the shims.
Since this alignment opposes the spring action of the suspension, the
cone and spider must have no glue grooves to the former.

In short, buy the cone kits or better still, ship the drivers to allow
someone who does vintage Tannoy work to install them and preserve
those $5,000.00 speakers through restoration. A top notch shop may
also have a magnet charger to restore the specified flux density to
the gap.

Tell you friend that there are few "Vintage" cassette decks and for
what this repair is going to cost he should look for something newer.

About glue....a bit of acetone can be used (in areas other than the
coil where it may create a shorted turn) to rewet and bond glue that
has cracked. GC Radio and TV Service Cement was the old fashioned
method used by TV repair shops. Real speaker reconers use the OEM
glues.

Adding epoxy to a solvent based glue joint is a cobblers repair.

Using epoxy in place of a solvent cement is better, but still
different. While tougher, epoxy often lacks the Q of a solvent cement
joint that has aged, particularly when mixed and applied by hand which
yields entrapped air and sloppy nonuniform ratios.

These observations do not apply to modern 1KW drivers used in PA
systems and beaten to death every weekend. Your friend's solution is
perfectly valid in this application and a little DEVCON goes a long
way toward a reasonable operating cost.

Tom Maguire
TMI Engineering

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3t44sc.v8m.19.13@news.alt.net...

On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 01:45:22 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com>wrote:



"Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3t2ats.t4n.19.4@news.alt.net...
On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:48:38 +0100, Ron
ron@lunevalleyaudio.com>wrote:

On 08/07/2010 20:15, root wrote:
Meat Plow<mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seek out a professional reconing shop. You need some specialized
tools
of the trade and some talent to recone. My good friend did it for a
living until he passed away recently. He would advise the same even
if
you didn't chose his service.

You can buy kits for reconing speakers. It isn't a
hard job. You remove the flex outer rim from the
cone. Then you cut out the bulge covering the voice
coil and put shims (supplied with the kit) in to center
the cone. Then you glue new flex material around
the cone, and wait overnight. Then you remove the
shims and seal up the bulge with glue.

Apart from the overnight wait for glue to dry, it
only took me about half an hour the first time.
With practice I might be able to get it down to
10 minutes.

And that takes care of the knackered voice coil does it?

Ron(UK)

The 10 minute recone part really bothers me. Sure with production line
jigs, shims, guides and people who do maybe a 100 per day that is a
tangible goal. But for an average Joe buying reconing parts and being
successful is not the average outcome. Sure there are exceptions so if
you want to try it on your own good luck.


Interestingly, I was discussing exactly this issue with the owner of the
music shop that I do a lot of work for, just this week. He rents a lot of
biiiiigggg PA equipment out - kilowatt amps and 4 x 15 bass cabs and
such.
These get damaged by inept users all the time, apparently. I suggested
that
it must cost him a fortune in replacement speakers, but he said "Oh no - I
just re-cone them". I asked him how long he had been doing this and he
said
years, but I had never seen this going on in his shop. Anyway, I asked him
how long it took, and how hard a job it was, and did he have lots of
specialist shims and feeler gauges and jigs and what have you. Nope, he
said. He reckons it takes him but a few minutes (literally) to do the job.
He says that the most time consuming part is making sure that all the crud
from the burnt up voice coil, is removed from the airgap. He uses a
combination of compressed air, and sticky tape to do this. As to centering
the new cone's voice coil, he says that most replacement kits come with a
set of four plastic spacer shims, but that many modern designs are
fundamentally self - centering anyway. He reckoned that it was basically a
piece of piss job that just needed a little care, and that much bollocks
was
talked on the subject. I might ask him to let me know next time he's got
one
to do, as I would like to watch him at work ...

Arfa

I've been around when my buddy Bart reconed some pro-audio speakers.
It all comes down to people doing it the way they have learned. It's
not as easy as you think but it isn't hard either. He chose to buy
specific tools and glues and treatments not relying on kits for shims
and glues. He knew what he was doing and reconed all my speakers.
Never had a re-run because of a botched repair. Hey if you can learn
the essentials and want to give reconing a try go for it. Maybe it's
for you maybe it's not.

I don't reckon I've got the patience, Meat. I had always thought that it was
quite a tricky and skilled job, so I was just interested to have a watch
next time Dunc does one, as he reckoned it was so straightforward !

Arfa