Mortite

[ar_pro]

I removed a pair of 12" woofers this weekend, and decided to try Mortite as gasket material. Having wrestled with & scraped ancient putty from a variety of old AR speakers, it never really seemed that attractive an option, with the typical foam gaskets and Parts Express sealing caulk providing a lot of convenience.

Home Depot had a 90 foot roll for about six dollars, and I wound up peeling off three strips of about 40" for each gasket. I'm really pleased with the seal - the woofer frame is very tightly bolted down, and the excess that squeezed out was easy to remove with a utility knife.

The woofer "push test" return takes nearly 3 seconds, which is pretty darned good.

Yay, Mortite! 

[lARrybody]

The Mortite rope caulk is a great way to seal those old acoustic suspension cabinets. Here is a AR2ax done that way.

 

Here is a AR4x cabinet sealed with the Parts Express caulk strips.

 

To me it makes the restorations on these classic speakers more authentic.  For the ADD and later models it's hard to beat the foam gasket tape. I also cut gaskets from foam sheets, but that is much more labor intensive.I recently has a pair of AR11's where someone used Permatex gasket sealer. Wound up damaging the MDF baffle cutouts removing the woofers. Had to resurface the cutouts with epoxy to repair the wood.