11/06/2025
What is inside a speaker, and what does a full restoration include?
When restoring a speaker you have 4 areas of work. Cosmetic, electronic, the drivers, and the cabinets structural integrity.
A full restoration can be all original, or modified with more modern components. I enjoy the latter. Speaker designers of mass produced name brand speakers are limited on budget, parts, and cosmetic finishing to create a good sounding competitively priced product and are often forced to use cheap components. We have had many advances in all categories over the years so why not take advantage of them? If used correctly they can make an even better sounding, nicer, longer lasting speaker while using the original canvas as the medium itself.
These speakers most likely did not originally come in your favorite finish, but a custom restoration can make them anything you can imagine.
What’s even inside a speaker?
Most speakers have some type of fiberglass, cotton, or poly fill stuffing to shape the sound, but most importantly the crossover network is in there. I like to call the crossover network the choir conductor. It tells which driver to sing which parts. The soprano, alto, tennor and base parts. Without the choir director the tweeters would blow trying to play the base, and all the voices would be jumbled together while the choir sings all the wrong parts.
All these components wear out, the choir gets confused, the cabinet gets scuffed, the drivers rot out and the speakers find themselves lost, not listened too in the back of closets, re-sale shops, flea markets and eventually the land fill…….So, bring them to me, let’s refinish them in your favorite color and get them singing again!
☮️❤️
JMod
