Sent three 1950s Jensen speakers to a speaker reconing company in Charlotte, NC back in September 2011. Was told it might take a few weeks. Well, here it is 4 months later and the guy is doing nothing but giving me a runaround, and he still has my speakers. The speakers are extremely rare, and pretty much nothing else will work in my amp. The speakers are a 12" F12Q (field coil type), and two permanent magnet 3" P3VH's. Look's like I'm going to have to make a 500 mile round trip and get them back, unless he's ripped me off and sold them to someone. Any of you ever had a problem sending speakers off for repair?

What kind of reputation does this guy have? Is he well known?

If I pick someone to recone my speakers, I'm going to the guy everyone else goes to, the one with a good track record.

It's a company called the Speaker Doctor out of Charlotte NC. Been in business quite a few years according to their web site. I sent pics before I sent them in, he quoted a price and said he could do the work. I probably should have done my homework and picked someone more on top of things.

Well, it sounds like he might be well respected if he's been in business for awhile; he'd be out of business by now if he wasn't legit. I'm guessing that you've tried calling them, but couldn't get ahold of anyone; if it were me, I'd try leaving a message...something with the words "attorney" in it; bet you get a call back within a day

My email went unanswered (emailed yesterday morning), so I called. The 12" is finished, and he claims the hold up is speaker coils for the two 3" units. He says only one company on the west coast can make them. Supposedly, they were ordered in late October. He's supposed to get back with me once he's contacted the company about the coils. I feel he is probably good at speaker rebuilding, just not so good at keeping customers informed during long build times. Anyway, I feel a bit better about things. Thanks.

The straight answers should have been coming since September, not starting 3 months later. I would insist on contacting that 'west coast' company directly to verify his claims.

Heh, I may hold the record there. I signed up once, along with about 20 other collectors, to have a run of automatic player pipe organ rolls remanufactured. We all contributed a set amount of money (a lot) to a mid-Atlantic-area rebuilder, who was going to contract with a roll maker to run 20 copies of several hundred rolls, so everyone would wind up with a set of new rolls.

It took a lot longer than anyone expected, and this guy who was coordinating it was the world's worst at keeping us informed. He got really excited when I called him (not in so many words) a crook, but he would go for a year or more without communicating at all. In the end, we (those of us who were still around, as several had died or couldn't be found at their known addresses) got our sets of rolls, but it took ten years.

I'm still skeptical; why would he need to replace the coils? Usually, that is not a part of reconing...and I find it hard to beleive that both coils are blown.

The 3 inch are perment magnet , most likely voice coils

I know...and tweeter voice coils usually aren't fried.

I must have seen more than my share bad ones of them then , they may have been fried , or the paper went bad and the voice coil rubbed or bottomend out and distorted the bobbin , or the glue failed , they could have even been wet for all you know .

That is somewhat of an anomaly; I've been listening to hi fi for over 25 years, and I've never had a bad cone tweeter. But, if the speaker was subjected to moisture, all bets are off; that will destroy ANY driver.

Also, speaking as someone who does recones for a living, at a pro-audio shop... voice coils in these old Jensen speakers are frequently wound on paper formers. Those formers can just crumble to confetti, with this much age.

I think I may have an inkling about who the reconer referred to above ordered those parts from. If I am correct, then the story there, is that they can only get voice coils in batches... if they happen to be out, they will wait until they get enough orders for the coil winding company to run off a batch of at least 10 at the time, before they re-stock.

If you're catching a number that JUST went out of stock (i.e, no preponderance of orders yet), you can wait a while. I'm waiting on voice coils to recone some EPI home woofers... I just agreed to bump up my order a couple more than I originally intended to get, to jump their order count up to above 10 pieces. So, they should be in production, shortly, now...

It's the only way they can get them done cheap enough, to stay in business, in this day and age...

I would say, that if this was the case they were dealing with, it would have been nice for the shop guy to inform the customer about why there was a delay in getting parts, the first time an inquiry was made regarding why it was taking so long. That would have been simple, and what I would have done...

Regards,
Gordon.

I've got to disagree a bit here. Having spent a good part of my life selling Hi Fi gear to dealers I have seen more fried tweeters than woofers. Often caused by alcohol and smaller amplifiers.

It doesn't necessarily take alcohol. In the early 80s, when I had a car stereo shop, these pot-heads would come in and tell me "Like, man, I need more powerful speaks, I keep blowing mine out, and they've got like 100 watts." They would look at me as if I was crazy, when I told them they didn't need more powerful speakers, but rather needed a more powerful amp, because the clipping was blowing the speakers. Since they really only cared about bass, they had probably blown the tweeters before they blew the woofers, but never noticed.

Yeah I see that all right. We did not do car stereo so I never even thought about them. I was only thinking parties and booze as we know the more booze the higher they tend to crank up the volume.

C'mon, folks please give these small cottage industries a break. It could take a year or more to complete a restoration. Ask yourself how bad you need this thing.

Of course patterns of rip-offs need to be spoken about. Don't think there are too many in a niche hobby like ours. Wouldn't last long as vendors, and there's no one or two big "scores."

Both of those P3VH C5536 speakers were in working condition (as was the F12Q), the paper cones had tears and were quite aged/brittle. As far as I know, the voice coils were in good shape, but apparently he saw the need to replace them. Maybe like Gordon said above, the paper formers were in poor shape. When I restored the chassis last year, I connected everything back up and played the amp a number hours with the shot speaker cones (at low volumes). So I know the voice coils were in working condition, but I had no idea of the actual physical condition of the coils.

We do reconing at my shop. We buy parts from a wholesaler who only sells to speaker repair businesses. A reconing kit usually consists of a spider, a voice coil, a cone, a surround, and sometimes a pair of flex wires. In many instances, these parts are pre-assembled.

As noted above, the formers for voice coils on old speakers often get brittle and begin to crumble. Also, when a speaker ages, it often gets progressively out of alignment where the voice coil sinks into the cavity in the magnet. The misalignment often causes the magnet wire to rub against the walls of the cavity. When this happens, the enamel gets abraded off the magnet wire -- a very bad thing. Also, prolonged friction can loosen the glue that holds the magnet wire onto the former -- again, a very bad thing -- and eventually the magnet wire can come loose -- an even worse thing. Misalignment also hastens the wear-and-tear on the former itself, again due to abrading and impact against the cavity walls.

Usually we will replace all the moving parts when we recone a speaker. Moreover, "recone" is a misleading term. In a great many cases where "reconing" is done, the cone is not defective. The problem is with the voice coil, former and spider.

Fred
repairing audio gear since the Pleistocene

Are speakers standardized enough that you can get voice coils for anything? I can see that you'd have some leeway for cones and surrounds, but the voice coils would have to be exact.