damaged focal and audax voice coils - email address needed

[navin]

hi i built a system for my wife's brother using some focal, audax and morel drivers.

the speaker is a WATT lookalike. the bass is 2 x focal 8N515. The mid isa Audax HM170Z0 and the top is a morel MDT33. I built these in 1996 or so. the focals and morels were salvaged from an older system (circa 1987).

recently one channle died. my BIL asked me to see what was wrong. thinking it was one of the cables i asked him to switch the cables and the second speaker died too.

The amp was leaking DC on one channel (it a dual mono design) and had blown 6 drivers (the cap in the tweeter XO protected the tweeter).

I live in India. I found local repair shops that can repair the voice coils but indian voice coils are no where near in quality as the orignals so i decided to see if I can import the voice coils.

I manged to find a contact address for audax and have emailed them. I cant find one for Focal. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Navin

 

[Peter Daniel]

Here's Focal link: http://www.focal.tm.fr/gb/sommaire.htm

 

[cocolino]

Hello Navin;
I doubt that You`ll get single voice coils from Audax or Focal.
Usually avaiable are only ready assembled kits existing from voice coil, cone, spider and surrounding. Those kits mostly are almost as expensive as a new driver, not to mention the difficulties to assemble this by oneself (already easier to install than a single voice coil but still very tricky).
I guess it is much easier and cheaper for You to buy second hand drivers in good shape at ebay for instance.

 

[Peter Daniel]

You could try to contact Orca at http://orcadesign.com/, which is North America dist. for Focal. I obtained 6 cone kits (this includes coil) for my Triangle driver (6, because none of them were properly aligned) for free. It all depends how you talk with them.

 

[kelticwizard]

I went to the Focal website and saw that the email address seems to be a request for a catalog. No room to leave a message.

At the bottom of the Focal home page they gave the following information, including address and phone number:


© Focal-JMlab - ZI Molina la Chazotte - 108, rue de l'Avenir - BP 74 - 42003 St Etienne Cedex 1 - Tel : (33) 04 77 43 57 00 - Webmaster : Sébastien Dumas

If you cannot find actual retailers that advertise Focal voice coils, you might try giving them a call.

Since they sell enough drivers to English speaking countries, I assume the language would not be a barrier. Anyway, the most you can lose is the price of a phone call.

Good luck!

 

[P.Lacombe]

Navin,

I live in France, it's easy for me to phone and ask Focal for email adress, and perhaps for voice coil or repair kit... see tomorrow morning.

Regards, Pierre Lacombe.

 

[navin]

Merci Beaucoup! Pierre!

BTW the email I sent to Audax also bounced. see below. I wonder if you can please get me audax's email address too.

Delivered-To: [email protected]
X-Failed-Recipients: [email protected]
From: Mail Delivery System <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 15:43:28 -0400
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
[email protected]
Disc quota exceeded:
mailbox is full: retry timeout exceeded

 

[navin]

my email from audax bounced too.
see below.
Delivered-To: [email protected]
X-Failed-Recipients: [email protected]
From: Mail Delivery System <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 15:43:28 -0400
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
[email protected]
Disc quota exceeded:
mailbox is full: retry timeout exceeded

1. i seem to have started 2 threads on this sorry guys. it was 2am! changed 17 diapers yesterday. now i know what my wife does the other 6 days of the week.

2. importing new drivers is going to be difficult for 2 reaosns. 1. cost of new drivers. 2. customs hassles. however voice coils are light and wil not face any problems with customs.

3. is orca the distributor for audax too, it would be a real expensive long distance call form India and the time zones make matters worse is there any email address at orca that I can use?

4. The drivers I have were gifted by a friend. He is not out of touch and has enough much bigger problems of his own. His company went backrupt after his wife and accountant cleaned him out etc... I cannot use his offices to get spare voice coils now.

5. will orca help me even if i did not get the drivers from them?

 

[navin]

now i am told that I would need a "driver re-coning kit" this kit is a surround, cone and voice coil in one assembly.

would focal and audax sell me these kits? what do these kits usually cost?

what can I do to prevent this from happening again? I could sue a DC blocking cap but that degrades the sound. come to think of it the kinda of music my BIL listens to he might not mind. What value (C / V) should I use 2200uf, 63V good enough?

 

[pinkmouse]

Have a look at Rod Elliot's Speaker protection circuit, it only puts one relay in line with the output, or Velleman used to do a kit for about £10 if you can get their stuff in India.

From a quick look around at other circuits, 4700uf seems to be a reasonable value as a dc blocking cap, but be aware, if your amp is a dual power rail, it will need to be a bipolar, as the voltage will swing both ways from 0v.

p.s. I've had email bounced from Audax recently, perhaps they are too busy to answer!

 

[LaMa]

I came across this german site:
http://www.audax-speaker.de/preise.htm#line77
On the pricelist are also "reparatur sets" available, maybe other firms are also able to deliver these.

 

[navin]

hey pinkmouse can you post the links. yes i will use bipolar. that makes sound ever worse but my BIl wont care if only I can repair these speakers. :-(

LaMa, i followed the link to
http://www.audax-speaker.de/preise.htm#line77

which set should I get. I hae sent them an email hope they respond. My German is a very rusty so I used English.

regards
navin

 

[navin]

BTW I noticed 2 things...

the HM170Z0 is NOT recmonded for bass frequencies (as suggested by the BLRS project). The X max is 0.5mm and the freq range recomended by http://www.audax-speaker.de/products/audax/c170z0.htm is 400-4k.

Ouch I was using it full range no wonder it had limited SPL.

Still need that voice coil though.

 

[Peter Daniel]

I've merged both threads in one, since you mentioned it was a mistake. I had similar experience in 1997 when 40V DC blew both my Triangle midranges. I contacted Orca and they suggested reconing kits. They initially quoted around $40 per one, but eventually sent them for free. Unfortunatelly, both kits were out of alignement and another two were sent my way, they were no good either and they sent two more. Although not perfect, I eventually had my drivers fixed. The guy who was doing repair was very slow too, so everything took more than 6 months. Of course I bought replacement drivers in a meantime. The repaired ones are still in a box. I tried one of them recently and it's doing funny noise. Maybe it's better to find new drivers on a big special. Saves you a lot of time and aggrevation.

 

[navin]

importing drivers into India are a hassle.

1. shipping for a full driver will be much more than for a recone kit

2. import duties and subsequent compunding duties are applicable on all costs including shipping.

3. importing a magnet requires a special licence

with a recone kit i avoid a big shipping cost, the cost of a new driver and the cost of getting the licence.

the other way is to ask a relative to get them. A few of my friends have been lucky to get relatives to co operate. i am not so lucky.

 

[navin]

Thanks Peter for merging the threads.

the Focal woofers have an edge wound copper coil that is supposed to be self centering.

the specs I have are:
Fs 27Hz, Rcc 7.84omhs, Qes 0.260, Qms 3.490, Qts 0.242, Vas 92.29 liters, Rms 1.278 Kg/s, Cms 1.3e-03 m/N, BL 11.60, Lvc 16mm, Hgap 6mm

I have a few more specs. I am more woorider about these drives than the Audax midranges.

The Focals are 4 and heavy. The Audax are 2 and lighter. I might be able to imprt 2 Audaxs but not 4 Focals.

BTW my mail for help to e-speakers bounced and elliot at zalytron said they dont sell recone kits.

 

[Peter Daniel]

The best place is to try Orca or Focal in France. Elliot doesn't sell cone kits. If you'll really have trouble in contacting Orca I might call them and ask.

 

[navin]

My email to Orca has not been answered. Maybe they are not interested in shipping to India. Maybe they are not interested in small orders.

If you can call them and use yor good offices I would be infinitely indebted.

Thanks in advance.

 

[pinkmouse]

Hi Navin,

The speaker protection urls...

http://sound.westhost.com/project33.htm

http://www.velleman.be/kits/k4700.htm

Either of these should be fine IMHO

Just a quick tangent- never thought about it, but is it possible to rewind existing voice coils- true DIY?

 

[navin]

thanks pinkmouse.

rewinding the existing coils is a very long shot. an alternte is to wind new coils out wire and use that.

this would probably be very poor and the driver woould be 10% of the orignal.

there are 3 problems.

1. getting the right wire. Focal for example uses edge wond flat
wire, Audax uses a complex multilayer construction, Morel uses hexagoanl wire (the tweeters are not blown though).

2. getting the wire to be wound so that it has similar characteristics as the orignal. the orignal former might not be reusable.

3. in the process of opening the drivers to rewind the coils i might damage the surround then I'd need a surround as well.

problem 1 is the big one. I am sure if I get only the coils I can manage to replace them.