Something rolling around INSIDE the driver..

[tresch]

Hey guys, a friend of mine had an old DIY subwoofer that he built awhile ago that he wanted rid of, so he gifted it to me. As it turns out, he DOES want a subwoofer, but this one is a huge ported monstrosity and, well, he's no carpenter; his wife would never let this ugly thing in the house (I'll post a picture of it later, when I have my camera handy).

So, I'm looking at just tearing the cabinet down, using the MDF to build a new, smaller, sealed cabinet with a plate amp from parts express, and use the same driver.

The driver is an older Dayton. a 15" from about 8-10 years ago. From the looks of it, it's a Dayton Classic DC380-8 (or whatever the equivalent was back then). An 8-ohm 100watt RMS woofer. From the looks and sound of it on the bench, it's a solid driver that will do him nicely.

NOW THE DILLEMMA

There's something rattling around in the driver. Yes IN it. I thought it might be a wire rattling around, but upon flipping the thing upside down I heard it drop into the dustcap. Then it rattles like crazy in there, and if I shake it around I can get it to drop down through the voicecoil into the vent at the bottom.

The speaker has a grill over the vent, so I can't really see in there, but I can see that it's something shiny.. and kinda round. Almost looks like a piece of hematite or something. The question is: how the heck did it get in there? Could it be something loose from inside the speaker? The speaker still seems to work and sound just fine, so it can't be anything too critical.

The big question is what to do now. I could remove the dust cap, or cut out the metal grill over the vent on the bottom. Cutting out the grill would be easier, I think, but removing the dust cap would give me a better view of what might have happened.

It's a paper cone; does anyone have good advice for removing a treated paper dustcap?

[454Casull]

If it were up to me, I would cut the vent grille. If you want to remove the dust cap, you can try heating up the glue with a blow dryer.

[Cal Weldon]

If you don't wish to cut, place the driver facing up on an angle so the object sits against the vent screen near one side. Put some white glue on your finger and squish it up against the vent so it goes through and contacts the object being careful no to not plug the screen (just enough to 'grab' the object). Put a little tape under the glue so it doesn't leak out, leave the driver on an angle and wait till morning to pull it off. Object now stuck to vent grille. No rattle and hopefully not too much glue on the vent. If there is, poke holes with a pin.

[tresch]

turns out the vent grille flexes easily and is just held in place by pressure. Just grabbed it with pliers and it popped right out!

*drumroll*

It's a black dab of black glue, it looks like. Like some dripped on the inside of the dustcap... probably an extra drip from manufacturing that dried and eventually seperated from the vibration.

neat!

[BHTX]

Originally posted by tresch
It's a black dab of black glue

Chew on it.

[tresch]

Chew on it.

YOU chew on it.


...


I'll lick it first

[badman]

You guys are babies.

I'LL chew on it.


*URK*