I had a 7" driver go quiet on a ProAc speaker. Driver was not abused in any way. Found out that the flexible tinsel leads to the voice coil were open circuit. I sent the drivers to a repair service and they replaced the leads with ones that were better than the originals. Later, another driver failed in the same manner. The speakers have 4 of the same drivers per pair, so I sent all the remaining drivers, working or not, in to get the leads replaced. Speakers work well now, and I don't have to worry about another failure in the future.
Scan speak only said the drivers are 12 years old, and to either buy new ones or find a repairer locally.
I tried softening the glue with nail polish remover on the sacrified driver(didn't have pure acetone around), but it didn't do anything. I think using a metal saw blade to carefully grind the glue down to access the wires might work though. Access to the wires is very restricted, so getting a knife in will be difficult.
I tried softening the glue with nail polish remover on the sacrified driver(didn't have pure acetone around), but it didn't do anything. I think using a metal saw blade to carefully grind the glue down to access the wires might work though. Access to the wires is very restricted, so getting a knife in will be difficult.
Contact cement / rubber solution can be softened by toluene, or gasoline.
Hot melt glue is very hard to remove except by cutting or abrasion. The white glue seems hot melt.
You can try melting as much as you can with a small soldering iron, be careful.
The other way, bit drastic, is to expose it to sunlight, that breaks it up. Risky for the cones.
Or, like they said, get it done by a professional who can salvage the cones.
At least quicker and cheaper than shipping to Denmark.
Get thick tweezers, and needle files.
A strip of abrasive paper can be glued to a bit of laminate / wood / whatever is similar to make a temporary needle file.
Use rough paper, less than 120 grit.
That will be useful where space is restricted.
Hot melt glue is very hard to remove except by cutting or abrasion. The white glue seems hot melt.
You can try melting as much as you can with a small soldering iron, be careful.
The other way, bit drastic, is to expose it to sunlight, that breaks it up. Risky for the cones.
Or, like they said, get it done by a professional who can salvage the cones.
At least quicker and cheaper than shipping to Denmark.
Get thick tweezers, and needle files.
A strip of abrasive paper can be glued to a bit of laminate / wood / whatever is similar to make a temporary needle file.
Use rough paper, less than 120 grit.
That will be useful where space is restricted.
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I have used four Scan-Speak 18W-8542-00 in a D'Appolito config a-la Pro-ac Supertowers back in the early 90's and all of them failed recently due to -IMO - manufacturer shortcomings. In all drivers the magnets and/or pole pieces had shifted or begun to shift due to adhesive failure. One failed catastrophically and slammed the pole piece hard against one side of the voice coil thus rendering it unusable. The problem seems to be that they used Cyanoacrylate (superglue) to glue the magnets and pole pieces in place and after 20 years or so the glue let go.
I managed to strip down the remaining three drivers and reposition the magnets and pole pieces and this time they were glued using super strength Araldite. I had to fabricate semi-circular spacers to get the voice coil gap uniform when rebuilding them. To repair the damaged speaker I ordered 2 new voice-coil and cone assemblies (one as spare) from Scan-Speak via Wagner (WES) and have now repaired this speaker. The total cost was less than buying a new 18W-8542-10 from Wagner.
Today I had an 18W-8545-00 which tested open circuit. I stripped it down and found the failure was again due to Scan-Speak using the incorrect adhesive to glue the coil wires to the back of the cone where they attach to the flexible braid wires going to the connection terminals. They appear to have used a rubber based contact cement (acidic) for this purpose and it caused the copper wires to disintegrate into strips of grey-white oxide. I suspect that many other drivers in the same production run will also have failed, or will fail in similar fashion. I have fed this info back to Scan-Speak and am awaiting a reply.
All in all I am not surprised that others have experienced sudden Scan-Speak failures and my experience tells me that their quality control appears somewhat lacking - at least for some batches.
Photos attached.
I managed to strip down the remaining three drivers and reposition the magnets and pole pieces and this time they were glued using super strength Araldite. I had to fabricate semi-circular spacers to get the voice coil gap uniform when rebuilding them. To repair the damaged speaker I ordered 2 new voice-coil and cone assemblies (one as spare) from Scan-Speak via Wagner (WES) and have now repaired this speaker. The total cost was less than buying a new 18W-8542-10 from Wagner.
Today I had an 18W-8545-00 which tested open circuit. I stripped it down and found the failure was again due to Scan-Speak using the incorrect adhesive to glue the coil wires to the back of the cone where they attach to the flexible braid wires going to the connection terminals. They appear to have used a rubber based contact cement (acidic) for this purpose and it caused the copper wires to disintegrate into strips of grey-white oxide. I suspect that many other drivers in the same production run will also have failed, or will fail in similar fashion. I have fed this info back to Scan-Speak and am awaiting a reply.
All in all I am not surprised that others have experienced sudden Scan-Speak failures and my experience tells me that their quality control appears somewhat lacking - at least for some batches.
Photos attached.
Attachments
I had a pair of Scan speak 18W/8535 woofers with open circuit.
I sent them to Mike Orban of https://orbanaudio.com/ for repair. He did a fabulous job of rebuilding the coils, spiders, and leads for a very reasonable price.
I sent them to Mike Orban of https://orbanaudio.com/ for repair. He did a fabulous job of rebuilding the coils, spiders, and leads for a very reasonable price.
I have 40-year old KLH woofers with replaced surrounds and guitar amp speakers (Oxford, CTS, Eminence) which are at least a half century old, with no tinsel leads or VC.problems. Some of them have been soaked in liquids and out in the sun in 95F, high humidity, for days at a time, then taken back into the AC to be suddenly cooled. No issues. There are JBLs and other brands that have been in tropical or frozen environments, probably back and forth with no problem. It’s not the Australian weather’s fault, I blame exotic new designs and materials made with not enough testing or attention to QC for the S-S failures.