Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Speaker Repair Complete!

So, over the course of two weeks, I managed to finish installing the new speaker surrounds onto the woofers of my thrift store purchased Dahlquist DQ-10s. Upon removal of the woofers, and handling them, it amazed me how _old_ they smelled. They reminded me of an old (army surplus?) canvas tent my father had. The smell stuck to my fingers for the rest of the day, no matter how much I washed them.

Anyhow, I re-soldered the speaker leads back on to the woofers, screwed them back into the cabinet, vacuumed off the 1/4 inch of dust that had accumulated inside the back of the speaker, and tried to carefully clean the dust off of the crossover components, re-attached an inductor and capacitor back to the cabinet...luckily I didn't have to solder that, just stick them back down.

I put the speaker grills and the expanded metal screens that protect the components back on. I carried my old Nakamichi TA-2A reciever downstairs to where the speakers were sitting (I didn't want to carry the speakers all the way up to the media room if they weren't going to work), hooked up an FM dipole antenna to the Nak, and fired it up.

The speakers sound great now!!

Later I did some research on the DQ-10 and learned that somwhere in thier life, the super-tweeter horns have been removed. Apparently this was/is a common mod for them, and smooths out the highs. I have not yet tried to eq the new rig in the media room, and will be interested to see how much tweaking will be needed to get a flat response, especially with the super-tweeter removal mod.

Thanks again to the folks at Simply Speakers, y'all make a good product. The new surrounds fit well, the provided glue worked well, and the instructions were clear and easy to follow.

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