Re-foamed AR17's

[Guest Brian_D]

I recently purchased a pair of AR 17's from Craig (CD on this forum) and refoamed the woofers last night.

I found the procedure to be quite simple, and very rewarding! The only problem I ran in to was with shimming the voice coil. The woofer had a dust cap over the voice coil, like most do, but underneath there was a flat disc of paperboard glued to the cone. I had to cut through that to get to the gap. Once that was done it was smooth sailing.

I purchased the kit through Parts Express, and found the kit to be quite complete. Many foam swabs were provided, and about three times as much glue as you could ever need! Also, the kit came with four surrounds and four dustcaps. The surrounds looked different, and one set was thinner, I think I'll save those for the mids on my 9's. Also, two dustcaps were poly, two were paper. I used the paper ones for these woofers.

I'm waiting the suggested 24 hours to see how they sound. I'll report back once they're fired up. I can't wait!