Fixed Model 17 tweeters.

[Guest]

First time post here,

I came across this forum in search for information on some model 17's I inheritied. They had been sitting in my mom's basement for years. The belonged to her second husband so I had no idea what they sounded like brand new. He told me he picked them up when he got out of college around 1969, and they were one of the best speakers on the market at the time. I needed a pair of speakers for the garage so I threw them in the truck and had them hooked to old panasonic reciever in the garage for a couple years. They always sounded horrible, well the fix-it bug has hit me this spring so I pulled them down to take a look at why the did't sound very good.

I found that their was no sound coming out of the tweeters. Looking over this forum it seemed to be a common problem. I know I could have replaced the tweeter with a newer one, but having been into old cars, I know the value of keeping things original.

Since they were broke, I figure no harm in tearing them apart and figuring what was wrong. I carefully pulled the metal screen off one of them. They got bent a little, but straighted up pretty nice with a small block of wood, rubbing it on a flat surface.

I took an ohm meter across the coil and it was open, when fiddling around with the soldered leads to the coil the ground side came up. I took and exacto knife and scraped the glue off the cone where the lead attached, seeing a minute amount of copper I hit it with the ohm meter. The coil was still good.

I then took a strand of copper from a wire and tinned one side with solder, leaving a very small glob on the end. I touched that the exposed copper on the cone and hit it quickly with the soldering iron, then checked the leads with the ohm meter. Success. I soldered the other ended to the lead connection. Then installed it.

It played wonderfully. I repaired the other tweeter in exactly the same way. Then tested them for about an hour driving about 65 to 80 watts from an old Marantz amp I have. They held up. I straighted out both the screens and reglued them on.

I ran them all day yesterday, the the repair held.

Since I never heard these speaker brand new and don't have a reference. I can't tell if the repair has affected the high end at all. But there seem to be plenty there, and compairing them to my Phase Tech PC-600's they sound pretty damn good.

I then oiled and polished the cabinets and now have a very nice set of vintage model 17's

I hope this may help some of you out there that have the same problem. If this is beyond your techical capiblity. I would consider giving it a try for you. Since both of these tweeter were broke in exactly the same way, its a good bet that others out there are repairable.

Regards,

Mike W.

Michigan, USA

[Guest rickcee]

Well, good work. excel. Rick