Help Please Speaker rub Spider torn :(

[Smoker]

i have a pair of mordaunt short 817's they are the ones with the oval woofers.
if i press gently on 3 of the woofers (2 on 1 speaker and 1 one the other) they make the scraping sound. these woofers have bass distortion too.

I took a look at the working woofer and compared it to a duff one and saw the spider has come away which looks to be the cause of the problem. but how damaged it is im not sure. all 3 woofers play fine except when given bass, in my case the bass played is from horns so archie shepp or miles davis is alll fizz and no finesse :( i didnt do this to them lets just say i had a bad fleebay purchase :( as del boy says no money back or guarantee :(

to give as much info that i can i made a video of me gently raising the duff woofer to show the problem as im sure that spider is meant to be glued down

link to video (https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wdbilwuntrk7c8/20121104_222834.mp4)

am i doomed or can this be repaired? if so if there anyone in the london area that maybe able to?

any help is appreciated, thanks.

[StanleyB]

They should be repairable. There was a good repair guy in Acton, but I never did keep his address on file.

[Stratmangler]

http://www.wembleyloudspeaker.com/

[Beobloke]

i didnt do this to them lets just say i had a bad fleebay purchase


Not necessarily as MS had a few "issues" with these. They date from the days when MS were owned by TGI Plc and were in the same building as Goodmans. One of my old Goodmans design colleagues apparently ended up being despatched to the MS end of the building for a few months to help them try and get the oval units designed and then successfully put into production. Today, the mention of the 800 series still brings him out in a twitching rage....

Needless to say, the 200 series superseded them pretty quickly and the last of the 800s were virtually given away. It's a shame in many ways - as you've found, when they're working properly, they're very good!

[walpurgis]

Surely re-gluing the spider shouldn't be too difficult as long as the correct alignment can be achieved. Assuming only part of the spider is detached the spider position should be about right.

I personally, would have a bash, using a water based adhesive such as 'Aleene's Tacky Glue' which I've just used on my Tannoy surrounds and found very effective. It allows a bit of movement whilst setting, so final alignment adjustments can be made.

[YNWaN]

Yes, an easy fix.

[Smoker]

Thank you for all the advice guys, i didnt realise these odd oval woofers caused them a lot of problems. my friends dads set ive listened to for a while were bought from new but kept in perfect condition. but then again he is much older and careful than these yoofs with their boom boom boom!

The link to wembley speakers was a great help to i emailed and gave them a call today. thankfully they only want me to take them the drivers and not the speakers themselves. anything pc/server related i could do but dont feel so confident with trying this myself. silly i know!

i'll be removing all the duff drivers and packaging them up so i will get to check how the other 2 are i expect they are in the same condition. all the comments here have given me a lot more hope that i didnt get ripped off with no chance of a fix.

the sages have shown the way!

:)

[nat8808]

Don't bother sending them off until you've tried re-gluing the spider (thought that was the advice given?).

Glue = £5 and 10 mins.

Wembley = £50? plus postage plus a few days wait.

If the glue doesn't work, you can send them to Wembley for them to sort out for probably the same price as before.

[nat8808]

P.S. I've sorted out seized drivers and rubbing drivers by moving the magnet/pole piece.

Involves heating up the magnet on an electric stove enough so that the glue softens and it can be moved by a block and hammer. You keep hitting it in the right direction until the coil is freed.

This obviously doesn't help here but might help someone else with rubbing cones.

[walpurgis]

P.S. I've sorted out seized drivers and rubbing drivers by moving the magnet/pole piece.

Involves heating up the magnet on an electric stove enough so that the glue softens and it can be moved by a block and hammer. You keep hitting it in the right direction until the coil is freed.

This obviously doesn't help here but might help someone else with rubbing cones.

Nat,

heating magnets is a well known way to demagnetise them, never do it. Also, many magnets are bonded in place with adhesive these days and would not relocate when heated, they might fall off though.

Much easier to use my old trick, which I've mentioned on AOS before. Heat the rear cone spider all round with a hair dryer to relax it's positional 'set' and press (not too hard) on the side of the coil former opposite the rubbing area and then put the dryer on cold and cool the spider. This re-sets it and hopefully stops the rubbing. Its worked for me several times.

Geoff.

[Smoker]

quick update on my speakers, thanks again for all the help and thanks to stratmangler for the link to wembley speakers. I took all four to them and they glued the spiders back down for me. they were great to deal with and the fix has made these speakers sing so sweet. im a very happy bunny :D

thanks again :)

[tannoyman]

i have a pair of mordaunt short 817's they are the ones with the oval woofers.
if i press gently on 3 of the woofers (2 on 1 speaker and 1 one the other) they make the scraping sound. these woofers have bass distortion too.

am i doomed or can this be repaired? if so if there anyone in the london area that maybe able to?

any help is appreciated, thanks.



There is a guy called Dave Smith at DK Loudspeaker Services in Hornchurch whose work comes highly recommened. His telephone no is 01708 - 447344 and his address is 10 Spring Gardens, Hornchurch, Essex RM12 5BQ

David :):)

[tommy6206]

nice result..