15 year old speakers rot but they can be easily repaired

Mirage 350 speaker with surround rot

The foam surround on loud speakers rots over time. The causes are numerous but the effect is the same – the speakers are toast unless fixed.

The surround keeps the end of the speaker cone positioned in alignment. With rotted surrounds, a session of loud music could easily destroy the speaker itself.

Remember the opening sequence in Back to the Future where Alex Keating – oops Michael J. Fox – plugs in his guitar and blows up his speaker? Essentially what he did was overdrive the speaker coil causing friction, heat and self-destruct.

It happened to me when I was 15. I tried playing electric guitar and the Rolling Stones 19th Nervous Breakdown through the same speaker at full volume but that’s another story.

speaker foam surrounds rot and fall away in chunks

Yesterday I was moving everything around in the TV room trying to make room for the bookshelf from the Katzass studio. I pulled off the speaker grill and ventured a look at my speakers. Argh, rotted foam surrounds.

Some of the foam surrounds were just sticky but easily broken. Others had already shed big pieces of foam inside the speaker cloth. Even the pieces that broke off are sticky and hard to clean off the floor where they landed.

Do I have to buy new speakers? I do not want to run my Visa up $2,000 on a new set of surrounds so I checked out the Internet.

First, surround rot is normal after 15 years. Since the Mirage 750’s came with me from Murray Harbour North they must be 25 years old.

Apparently most people buy a kit for about $30 and replace the surround themselves. I found two site Newfoam.com and Decware.com that offered kits.

There are numerous bulletin boards where people discuss when to replace your foam surrounds. It seems like something the hobbyist can do themselves. Both sites will take your woofers and repair them for you.

I’m going to buy 4 kits (Mirage 750’s x 2 and Mirage 350’s x 2) from Decware. Newfoam has lots of cool things to buy.

Decware has simple on line tutorials with ample illustrations. Customer service is always an important part of the purchase decision. They also promise to fix any really bad botch ups I might make.

Decware also has interesting reading on using more efficient speakers and 2 watt amplifiers. According to them, 100 watt amplifiers are a waste of energy. Interesting idea.

Hold tight on my promise of an article on the vinyl Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Revue. This might take a month.

In the meantime, I’m working on reviews of Lennie Gallant’s new French CD Le Coeur Hante’ and the 4-CD box set My Dusty Road by Woody Guthrie.