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mikepick

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  1. Thanks for the info, I expected as much. Using the typical beige linen was what I had in mind at first but then the veneer looked pretty good along with the original fabric style. I think I may go with a cheaper tan I have around for now and maybe get a darker brown linen when I think about it some. It's not salvageable, looks like a cat had been at it at some point. I also considered guitar amp style cloth, maybe check into more like that. The orange is a great idea for a JBL look I guess. 😃 The veneer is coming out nicely compared to the vinyl, especially the condition it was in, along with the smushed corners that needed repair.
  2. Hi folks. I’ve had a pair of Dynaco A-25VW speakers for a few years now, with the intention of giving them a facelift, and I’ve finally gotten to it, having scraped off all the old scratched up vinyl and applied new veneer. (And filling smashed corners etc) At first I intended to give them the classic linen grill cloth treatment but I find myself strangely liking the idea of finding a replacement for the original hideous brown and orange scheme. Trouble is, I don’t know where to find something like so, so wondering if anyone has any ideas where to start looking? Mike
  3. Been working away on these for the last couple of weeks, and I'm getting pretty close to done! Had a listening session with both hooked up last night and they are sounding pretty good, initially! I did quite a bit more reading after the initial post, the Bungled AR 2ax repair thread proved a great source of information. One of my woofers had both masonite rings detached, while the other had the lower ring detached. I had glued the top ring done before getting at the lower rings, and so it was a bit tricky to get them done. I ended up levering the rings up with popsicle sticks so I could get under to clean and then spread the glue with a toothpick around the lower ring. Getting the coils centered was a little tricky, but not too difficult, they seem to naturally center into a place where a could not detect any rub when pushing on the dust caps. I ended up replacing the big wax cap with the Solens poly caps. For the pots, I initially tried to clean them, and they came out reasonably well... so I thought. There was still some pitting, and I tried smearing some conductive carbon grease on the plates to even out the conductivity (and prevent further corrosion.) One of the center buttons was also a bit loose, and so I tried a ring of solder around it to get conductivity to the center post. When I reassembled the first speaker, there were too many dead spots in the pot rotation, so I decided to try rebuilding the pots. The coils and lower buttons were in decent shape, so the plan was to replace the center contact. I ended up 1/2 inch copper discs from Amazon, drilled out a 3/16th hole, and riveted them in place, after drilling out the old rivet and disc. Removing the old center plates revealed more corrosion underneath, so I soaked the pots in a vinegar / water mix after disassembly. I dried them thoroughly with the heat gun, and included a dollop of dielectric grease under the new copper contact. I also flooded the coil area with dielectric grease, wiping it from contact areas, and applied some conductive grease to the exposed conductive areas in hopes of preventing further corrosion. (The black goo on the wiper in the picture below is conductive grease.) I have no idea how long they will last but they seem to work pretty well at the moment. I've done an initial treatment of Howards restore finish on the cabs, they're pretty good, aside from one dent which I am patching with some old veneer. Going to try a little stain and then hit the whole side with Howards to see if it can even out. Right now I'm putting a coat of flat black spray paint on the second baffle, and then its on the the grills, the 123stitch order came in last week...
  4. I've come into a set of AR-2ax speakers and they need a refresh to get them working again. There is a ton of info here on the board, and I've been reading as much as I can, including the AR-3 repair manual and various threads. These seem to me to be early models, the serials are AX97XXX and AX100XXX. The boxes are in great shape, so I am hoping to do much more than a refresh with Howard's or the like. The grills were typically discolored and yellow, so the cloth will need replacing. A low-volume test run revealed no sound from the tweets or mids, and one woofer was very slightly buzzy. I could not find staples on the front, so I ended up cutting the cloth and gently freeing the first grill from the glue. I've pulled the woofer and put the stuffing aside to put back in later. My first questions are about the woofer. It has the cloth surround. There is no date stamp or markings other than the stamped AR logo and a medical cross sticker for the positive terminal. The surrounds look well glued down, and the surround ring looks solidly attached as well. What I can see of the spider looks OK. There is no rub when the speaker is sat on the magnet. My MM measures a resistance of 5.9 Ohms. I am a bit concerned about the foam ring in the middle, it is deteriorating, but I don't know what purpose it serves. I have some of Roy's dope from a KLH project (hopefully enough left for this set) and that's on the list, but is there anything else I should look for with it? Pics attached. Thanks, Mike
  5. As a matter of fact the little grill risers were parts of what I saved from the wrecked cabinet. ? I don’t hate them, but it is interesting to think about alternatives. Maybe putting the risers on the grills themselves and using modern grill clips? If the seal could somehow be maintained on the cabinet. I’ve been getting the grill cloth from the 123stich site as others recommend here, I think the 22s might be a lighter shade which is quite nice. The cloth on the Advent is the Natural color I think. I like that gunstock color so much that I may try it on some other projects, it’d be interesting to find an approximate match for original coloring. The speaker in the background is an older Smaller Advent, with the green tweeter. Oddly enough I did pick up a pair of Dynaco A25-VWs this week, another candidate for veneer. I used the salvaged front and back of the old cabinet as a template for the crossover and driver holes (thus the wobbly edge on the woofer opening) and made myself a template for the recess by tracing a woofer.
  6. mikepick

    KLH 17 schematic?

    I've recently fixed up a pair of 17s, they sound (and look) really nice, but I wouldn't describe them as having heavy bass, but rather a nice rounded tone as JKent says. They project quite a bit though in my experience, the bass is more solid as you get further out from them. I used Dayton caps and stuck to the same values more or less, using 2 x 2uf and 1 x 8.2uf. I keep mine in the Normal position on the switch. I'm no expert but even more important, in my opinion, is to get the proper surround sealant to re-dope the cloth surrounds, which I acquired from Roy C on this board.
  7. I'd be interested in seeing them for sure, I'm obsessed with them right now. That stain is Varathane brand, to be more precise. The reddish hue was what I was looking for, I had put new veneer on a KLH Model 22 last year and ended up with a bit of a mismatch with its partner, after using a natural Danish Oil to finish. (On the left below). The blow-out, I think I would avoid in future by being more conscious of where the bearing on the bit is tracing. I was being clever by tracing it lower on certain edges, to avoid smashed edges and corners, but on those edges where the grain meets I think you need to trace as close to the edge as possible. It's easy to sand more oof the corners, but impossible to put it back. I did end up reinforcing the screw holes as well, I usually put wood glue in them to firm then up and in this case, used epoxy to build it back up again. Part two of this project is now ongoing, here is a dry fit of a (hopefully) replica cabinet to replace its partner. Excited to hear how this turns out!
  8. Thanks! ?Not a super high bar, although I don't know what that vinyl looked like new. It's certainly pretty drab on my sets. The cabinet work... well it looks good from a distance, though I made a number of unforced errors and so it doesn't quite stand up to a close look. Made a couple of gouges while planing the hardwood nose and sanded through on a corner. The stain color helps blend it all together. I used veneer that I got via the big online retailer, which came with a 3M backing adhesive. I did strip the vinyl completely, which wasn't hard, and then gave it a sand as the 3M adhesive likes a smooth surface. I trimmed it with a flush bearing bit and filled the smashed corners with epoxy. Then I miter cut the walnut hardwood nose pieces to size and glued and clamped them on. You can see a major error here in the photo where the flush trim bit took out an entire edge, it must have curled outward slightly. I had some leftover veneer from the age where I had cut that piece, though, so I cut a new strip and patched it into place. I didn't have enough to use for an entirely new panel. This set has the soft open-cell foam instead of the fiberglass fill, each cabinet has 5 pieces, 3 behind the tweeter and 2 behind the woofer. I add a little extra poly fill behind the woofer at the bottom to fill the space. The crossovers in these have two capacitors, Unicon 50V/8mf and 50V/4mf, which I replaced with a pair of Dayton 250V/2uf and a single Dayton 250V/8.2uf. These cabinets came with the red tweeters.
  9. Update: new surround seems to have done the trick, nice clear sound now with none of the prior distortion. The "double tap" effect is no longer present as well, tapping the dust cap lightly produces one hollow sounding thump. So that worked out, and I'm into the next stage with this set, which is to cover in veneer and add a hardwood nose to the cabinets. It looks pretty good, though it was not without some mishaps, it's not easy to add veneer to an already old and somewhat beat-up cabinet. I stained the veneer with a reddish "gunstock" tone to warm it up and redressed the grill with new linen and a reproduction emblem from the auction site. While I was in there I recapped the crossover as well, figured I might as well. The partner cabinet, unfortunately, is water damaged, and I was going to try to replace the bottom panel but the damage had cause the bottom sides to swell also. In this case, I'm going to construct my own replica cabinet and see how that works.
  10. Thanks for the info Pete! I've read a bunch of older posts on AK and here about the Smaller Advents, there is not a whole lot of discussion about these and I've read what I can about them since I got hooked on them in the last year. This will be my second set, I have a set with the green tweeters that I like very much. I'm in the process of cleaning this woofer up for a new surround, hoping it will do the trick.
  11. You are probably right about rub. I just replaced the surround on another woofer, and I pulled it for comparison. In comparison to the problem woofer, the new surround looks more robust and stands a bit taller. Attached are pictures showing the problem woofer from the top, the spider, and a comparison with the newly fitted surround on the left. (The newer one has a more brown-dish dust cap.) I don't hear or feel any rub when I push down gently on the dustup on the "bad" woofer, but I do notice a kind of echo—a double tap—when I tap the dust cap gently, which is not present on the good one. So I think you are right, I will replace the surround since I have a spare, and see if that solves the problem. I did not need to remove the dust cap on the good woofer, and so I'm going to leave it in place while doing the repair.
  12. I am working on a pair of Smaller Advents and one of the woofers has a sort of soft distortion, like a buzz, but not a harsh sort of sound. I'm going to try and add it to the thread as a recording but for the moment I'll just try to describe it. I bought this woofer from the auction, it was sold with a new surround on it. It looks good, visually, the spider has no irregularities and the cone is intact. The tinsel wire seems solid, and there is no rub from the voice coil when I press it down. The distortion is more noticeable at low volumes, and it gets masked as you raise the volume. As a background, I've been doing some speaker repair and have replaced surrounds, but am a relative novice. I pulled the woofer from the cabinet and have done some feeling around with it playing on the workbench, and the one thing that solves the distortion is pressing my fingers lightly on the dust cap. pressing the surround in also stabilizes the sound, but the dust cap had a much more noticeable effect. Does it seem plausible that the dust cap might need to be removed and re-glued? I don't know how the new surround was attached, I just put a new surround on one of these spit-cap woofer and did not need to remove the dust cap. I may just cut the dust cap out and clean it up to see if it makes a difference, as it seems I have little to lose. Thanks, Mike Edit: I am trying to add phots, but it gives me error 200. Visualize a nice looking spit-wad woofer.
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