Are you handy to have around the house when things break or otherwise fail to work properly? Do you save broken items (toasters, microwave ovens, speakers, receivers, etc.) thinking you might fix them some day? Then you'll like how my little repair project worked out yesterday.
I really love the Klipsch 2.1 computer speakers and I have so ever since they came out more than a dozen years ago. They are THX certified and sound great. They aren't all that expensive considering the quality of sound output you get. Anyway, I own many sets of these speakers, even the 4.1 setups with surround sound. But things don't last forever, and that's especially true with loudspeakers. I used to work at JBL Sound in Northridge, California for 1-2 years back in the late 1970's, and I learned quite a bit about how loudspeakers are made. I know some of the wear-out mechanisms and it's usually deterioration of the foam surrounds that connect the speaker cone to the speaker frame. Several years ago I had set aside one system due to resonating bass which is what can happen if the speaker cone isn't uniformly held to the frame, keeping the voice coil in alignment with the magnet that moves it up and down. A week ago I had another system that was connected to my recent rebuild of TOTB, which was set on top of my workbench shelving unit, start doing the same resonating thing to where I had to keep the volume pretty low to avoid it. Well, that won't do!
I first took down the TOTB speaker set and pulled the amplifier section out of the back. I looked in there and I could see that one of the loudspeakers (there are two identical ones in the cabinet) had chunks of foam missing. I knew this was the source of the problem. Now, if I had lots of time and patience, I might be able to have the speaker 're-coned', which means installing a new foam surround. But remember that I had an even older system that I had set aside. I opened that one up and sure enough, the same speaker in that one had the foam crumbling from the speaker cone. But the other speaker looked good, and remember - both speakers in the cabinet are identical. So I pulled out the good speaker from the old unit and installed it in the one from the workbench. I hooked it up and I found joy. I played a few songs pretty loud (my wife wasn't home at the time) and they sounded very good.
So, lessons learned? Sometimes you should save parts of systems that are similar or the same as other units you have in use. Swapping out parts isn't all that hard if you are good with hand tools and it didn't cost me a penny to get the TOTB speaker system back in operation. Long live Klipsch!
Do you have a repair story to share? It doesn't have to involve a computer. Tell us about it.
