Opinion
In the 1970s and 1980s, when it was fashion to have big component stereo systems, and whenever my dad asked me to buy him another component, I’d use the opportunity to spend his money on stereo equipment that, in those days, I found interesting.
Back then, components typically cost $300-$400 each -- multiply those by 3 for the cost in today’s inflated money. A typical stereo setup that a university student bought himself had a receiver (pre-amp, amplifier, and tuner in one), a tape deck, a turntable and a pair of speakers. So, we’re looking at nearly $4,000 in today’s money.
(My trick, as a university student, was to buy one component a year in a carefully planned sequence: first, the Marantz receiver (with Koss headphones), Hitachi tape deck [getting friends to record to tape the LPs I bought], SoundDesign speakers, and finally, in year four, the Denon record player.)
When it came to speakers for my dad, I decided on a pair from SpeakerLab. Their marketing twist was that you could save money by assembling speakers yourself. See https://speakerlab.net/catalogs.html for an archive their catalogs from the 1970s and 1980s.
40-year-old Speakerlab promo photo, with the one I purchased in the foreground (image source SL Speakers)
The company still exists, or rather restarted under the name of SL Speakers; see https://speakerlab.net/. I recall way back in 1982 putting the speaker kit together in my basement room I was renting off-campus, and feeling pretty proud that they worked!
Forty-two years later, they still work. My dad no longer needed them, so I took them home with me. The one speaker, however, was falling apart:
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The crossover, which also held the speaker terminals, no longer adhered to the back, so it was difficult to attach speaker wires
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The tweeter had fallen out
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The front grill no longer stuck on
The tweeter and woofer were held in with silicon, a good way to insulate the sound from inside the cabinet, and a good way to install them for apartment-dwellers who usually don’t have much in the way of tools.
The back of the speaker: the now-loose crossover
Doing the Repairs
So, today I finally tackled the repair job; fortunately, all the repairs were mechanical, not electrical!
To get inside the speaker cabinet, I had to remove the woofer. I pried it off, away from the silicon holding it in, with a flat screwdriver acting as a chisel. Then I removed the stuffing, which is used as a sound baffle.
Once inside, I could see that I could screw the crossover into the back of the cabinet, using short screws so they would not protrude out the back.
With that done, I put the woofer back into place, and then screwed it and the tweeter down tight.
The real puzzle for me the front grill, why it wouldn’t stay in place. I finally noticed there was too much of a gap between the 2x four thingies that hold it in place. My wife suggest adding Velcro, so I found some spare strips in my shed, and staple-gunned them near the top and the bottom of the cabinet. It worked!
Ooops. After everything was put back together, I realized I forgot to put the baffling back inside the speaker. So, I put on an LP, and listened to each speaker carefully -- one with and one without baffling. There is a difference in tone, where the one with baffling seems to have a deeper bass with a less hollow sound.
So, out came the woofer, and in went the stuffing. Two minutes extra work.
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