preserving old but good foam surrounds

[Guest crusty]

Has anyone ever came up with a way to preserve old but intact foam surrounds ?

I had the pleasure of refoaming a pair of Tannoy's and by their instructions after glueing the new surrounds in place, take the remaining glue and mix a small amount of water with it and then spread an even coat over the outside of the new surrounds. Has anyone here tried this ? A thinned out water base adhesive spread sparsely over the surround may not add to much stiffness to the surround, and in fact extend its usefull life. Perhaps this would also preserve original surrounds that are still in good shape.

Any responses ?

[Carlspeak]

>Has anyone ever came up with a way to preserve old but intact

>foam surrounds ?

>I had the pleasure of refoaming a pair of Tannoy's and by

>their instructions after glueing the new surrounds in place,

>take the remaining glue and mix a small amount of water with

>it and then spread an even coat over the outside of the new

>surrounds. Has anyone here tried this ? A thinned out water

>base adhesive spread sparsely over the surround may not add to

>much stiffness to the surround, and in fact extend its usefull

>life. Perhaps this would also preserve original surrounds that

>are still in good shape.

>Any responses ?

I've refoamed a number of speakers that have been 'coated' with something in an attempt to extend the life of the surround. It's a risky business. Many of them come to me with a rubbery, black coating that was applied with a brush. This obviously not only alters the surrounds performance, but also cannot be applied uniformly, thus creating areas of stiffer and less stiffness of the surround, again altering it's original design. The process also adds mass to the cone which in turn can affect the driver's overall T/S parameters.

Surrounds generally last 10-20 years, depending on the conditions they are stored and used under. That's a pretty long time - all things considered. You can listen to a whole lot of music and the cost of refoaming at the end of the surround's life is miniscule when compared to the value it yielded.

Remember, it's all about the music

Carl

Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

[Guest crusty]

Hi Carl, ditto, it was just a thought. It has seem to work for many manufacturers in the past, ie doped cones to lower the resonance of a speaker. Of course those speakers probably began life with very lite weight cones not suitable for acoustic suspension designs.

I have had several loudspeakers with coated surrounds though, besides the Tannoys (coated foam). My old Boston Acoustics had some sort of coating over foam. Of course that was probably machine applied very thinly and uniform. But even they began to deteriorate after 20 years.

Thanks for your informative reply