Ain't that the truth though I have too many interests and all would be happy to eat my entire bank account.
BTW, when everyone refers to unwinding the first voice coil, what is the method for attaching it back to the broken lead? I don't suppose these delicate wires can be soldered? And what would you solder them with? A hot sewing needle? They're thinner than a human hair!
Yeah THAT'LL go over big!
I'm beginning to understand. And I think this tweeter had a break where that spot of green corrosion was at the base of the VC where the terminal wire met there. Though it was too small to see clearly... even taking a picture and blowing it up.
I did touch the two leads together and got 00.00 which made me realize 0.L was NOT zero ohms. That and you telling me over and over it was almost certainly not zero ohms.
where two different metals meet there is a potential set up.
In the presence of moisture that becomes corrosion.
Copper from the voice coil coming in contact with another metal will cause corrosion in normal humidity. It could be gold or chromium or aluminium or steel or brass, or ... etc.
Scrape off the corrosion. Solder the connection.
Insulate with a little long lived varnish to keep the moisture out.
In the presence of moisture that becomes corrosion.
Copper from the voice coil coming in contact with another metal will cause corrosion in normal humidity. It could be gold or chromium or aluminium or steel or brass, or ... etc.
Scrape off the corrosion. Solder the connection.
Insulate with a little long lived varnish to keep the moisture out.
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That makes sense and there is a moisture here as we are only a few miles inland from the Pacific and get the ocean breeze every day.
But how do you solder something so fine? What kind of iron and solder?
Right. I'd like to hear opinions on this too. I Googled all this earlier and some people said (in other forums) to use an exacto knife to scrape it away (would cut this wire!)... others said use the soldering iron to melt it (melting the wire seems inevitable).... and there was a PDF guide on how to solder tweeters with tinsel wire, which was supposed to be fine wires, but I read that guide and saw the pictures and the wires they were soldering were about 100x thicker than the one on my tweeter. So it seems like the tower of Babel where everyone assumes they're talking about the same thing (all considering the thickness of the wires on their own tweeters as 'the fine wire' everyone else is referring to) but they're not. So just to be clear in my case at least, these single-strand wire leads that leave the terminals and travel to the VC are so fine they almost cannot be seen without a magnifying glass. They are literally finer than a human hair and I haven't yet read or seen a YouTube video that addresses wires this fine. Not that they don't exist, I only had limited time to look earlier... will revisit later if no one here has experience or advice repairing such fine wires. Or maybe it can't be done without specialty tools?
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Hi,
They are not that fine in any sense *. Yes you do scrape them to get the enamel off,
the blade being backwards when scraping forwards **. A soldering iron won't melt
the enamel and the enamel melts before the wire, all very obvious if you think.
rgds, sreten.
* Not for any tweeter I've fixed or seen.
They are way thicker than a human head hair.
** blade sharpness is irrelevant, any hard edge
will do to shatter the glass coating off the wire.
They are not that fine in any sense *. Yes you do scrape them to get the enamel off,
the blade being backwards when scraping forwards **. A soldering iron won't melt
the enamel and the enamel melts before the wire, all very obvious if you think.
rgds, sreten.
* Not for any tweeter I've fixed or seen.
They are way thicker than a human head hair.
** blade sharpness is irrelevant, any hard edge
will do to shatter the glass coating off the wire.
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You don't always have to scrape the insulation off (I use extremely fine grit sandpaper if needed) because sometimes the enameled insulation used is polyester and a hot soldering iron will make it melt, in some cases I've seen it peel off like a banana skin when applying the hot soldering iron tip and I in some cases have even seen the insulation just break away when unwinding the wire off the voice coil former.
If the voice coil wire is copper you have a 50-50 chance of repair, if its copper coated aluminum wire your chance of repair is zero, good luck .
If the voice coil wire is copper you have a 50-50 chance of repair, if its copper coated aluminum wire your chance of repair is zero, good luck .
Not these. This is my own hair plucked from my head, laid up against the VC... at a distance and up close.
Postimage.org / gallery - DH10, Hair thin Tweeter Wire 1
EDIT: And btw in the closeup the hair is not any closer to the camera lens than the VC. The hair is touching the VC. You can see that in the distance shot if you look closely... the hair curves up around the VC before continuing up over the top end of the tweeter. (I didn't move the hair between the 2 shots.)
... if the wire is substantial, yes. When it's this fine, no it isn't obvious to me that I can control a clumsy soldering iron tip (even a small one) to that fine of a degree to melt the enamel without that heat transferring to and melting such a fine wire. Then again, I also admitted I have no experience soldering... but I do know a fine wire when I see one.
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OK you go first and if you ruin them I'll send you my pair. The breaks on my pair are next to the terminals not at the voice coil. As for the scraping the square, or back, edge of the blade is what works since the knife edge will try to cut the wire. I need stronger eyeglasses to take this on and I'm a wide ranger, mostly.
I'd love to go first if I had a clue what to do! Sreten seems to have disappeared once I posted the picture.
And I had the feeling he was one of the many members here with experience, but I guess he hasn't worked on these either.I don't know if you are old enough to remember the old show "Land Of The Giants" but it was about a group of people stuck in a world where they are about 4-inches tall in comparison to the "normal world" which was gigantic. Well, if I stick the "small" soldering iron next to this wire it's going to be Godzilla-like. And the wire is so damn small I STILL never found the break, though made one cut myself on one of the leads coming from the terminal about halfway to the VC when picking at the varnish.... just b/c I was mad by then.
(Thankfully the replacement tweeter I found on eBay arrived and works perfectly, but I would repair mine for no other reason that experience and to have a second, if someone would tell me what kind of soldering iron and solder to use.)So I am game, but continue to be clueless.
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