Repair speakers

I seen where someone used white glue and coffee filters. My take on it . I used contact cement in a spray can.
Sprayed speaker and coffee filter . Let set for about minute stuck the coffee filter on the speaker smoothed it out over the breaks. It tied all the tears back together almost like new. Strong hold . Stronger than original . Works great.

What brand of spray glue did you use?

I used 3m super 77 adhesive . It will bond all types of materials. Great stuff.

If it's just a small break in the speaker, you can mend it with fingernail polish.

when its just a tear or small hole i use fabric glue and member pbpix uses new cones and fabric glue to recone some old speakers that looks great and he claims they sound Great

heres a speaker with a long tear we fixed with fabric glue!! and still sounds great

Use some flat black fabric paint . Too hide the glue.
Looks great. Made coffee filters look great.

Does anyone have a resource for reconing speakers how to what to buy and where to buy it? It can't be that difficult. years ago you just mailed them out of state to some service, but now even if that's still avail it would cost a small fortune. Usually more than the radio is worth.

Try Electronixs.com for speaker cones. 5" is the smallest you can get. Also check YouTube for tutorials on reconing.

http://www.electronix.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=speaker+cone&x=0&y=0

I repair and recone speakers . I am going to comment on the above posts with honesty . Of coarse you can put almost anything on a paper cone to hold it together . I am going to speak as a professional here .

You should never use fingernail polish on a speaker cone . Its to color and shine up fingernails .
Contact cement , rubber cement both have lots of acids in them and they will shrink up and loose hold later on .

A speaker cone is fairly soft and designed to be that way to properly display its best tone quality . Coating to much of it with ''stuff'' will help it to not sound as good as it should , that may not matter to some people ...

When i recone or repair a speaker i do not use any type of rubber glues . I use only special speaker glue ordered from ''simply speakers'' or i use wood glue or fabric glue , nothing else .

I have used white glue such as Elmers for small tears.The trick is not to use too much.I put some on my finger and apply over the tear.when it dries it soaks into the paper of the cone.I have radios that I restored years ago with speakers that were repaired this way and it's still is holding up just fine.Of corse with big chunks missing or a little mouse that cleaned all the paper off down to the voice coil you are better off reconeing or replacing it with something sutable.

Ken thanks for the tip..I try to find a replacement speaker from a old set.I have in the past done what others have posted here.Now i will by the speaker glue ..Sprman

I used Jackson Speaker Service In Jackson Mi.He has reconed a few speakers for me.Not cheap, last one was about three years ago I don't know if he is still in business yet.

Thanks . For most general repairs either elmers or wood glue and or fabric glue will work . You dont 'really' have to buy the special stuff for old radio paper cones . I mostly use it on modern speakers .

A simple rip in the paper will require nothing more than a very thin bead of wood glue over the rip . Align the rip back together . Sometimes i use pieces of masing tape on the back of the cone to hold things till i can glue it .

I use a small screwdriver to apply the glue over the rip . Put a small amount of glue on the screwdriver and tap up & down over the rip as you move along . The glue will lay nicely over the rip with minimal mess . On bigger speakers i glue the back side ( if you can get to it )

If you follow the above it will work fine on smaller speakers 6'' 0r smaller to put this glue on the flexable outer part . If its a bigger speaker with some decent bass i would use the fabric glue on the surround areas . The cone moves alot there and wood glue is stiff and could break loose

In general , any speaker cone should have glue that dries stiff on the strait body of the cone and flexable drying glue on the outer surround area to get the best results in sound quality from a speaker .

I have seen many old speakers fixed with rubber type glues . After time it seems to almost ''go away '' we are talking probably 30 years .

I do not recommend putting any patch material over simple rips . It only stiffens the cone .

I would like to learn to recone speakers. There is nobody close to me who does it anymore. Shipping is the big killer to sending it to Michigan or somewhere to have it done. The guy who used to do mine was nearly blind, so it can't be that tough to do. He passed away, so now I need to do it myself. That might be a good thread to start on this forum.

Regards

WC

I agree about starting a thread and wouldn't mind doing this myself. There is a good market for this service at the car shows.

Yes, start the thread because I think most people would be very interested...including me.

I have had speakers sent here from California to New York . I do all of them for my 2 local radio friends . Cleaning out an old cone and gluing in a new one is not very hard ...but... if it gets where you need to start replacing voice coils and spiders , it is mind blowing how many different sizes they used . You would think this would be fairly common but nnnnnoooo .... !

Even cones have several different depths . Only a certain size cone is available today . You could request different sizes out of the norm but it would require a factory re-tool and a minimum 100 or so piece order at hundreds of dollars cost .

Voice coils are different ohms and differ in sizes a hair apart . Believe me ... I have several hundred voice coils here and its true .
Spiders are either flat or pan shaped . These have severa variations in size also .
If you have an older speaker with a front spoked spider that is bad , most of the time you have to replace it with a modern behind the cone spider . This is where you need a fairly good stock of sizes to get around this . I dont know of any sources of new front spoke spiders .

Many of the speakers sent here for a ''re-cone'' were filthy dirty rusty frames with everything shot . I had to contact the owner with a new price because those turned into a total ''rebuild''

Eventually before i die i hope to have some sort of website to put this kind of stuff .