"You need some new hobbies," said no one ever.

Well, I guess I found myself a new hobby. Yep, I'm gonna try my hand at restoring speakers. Well, not restoring per se, rather just the process of refoaming the woofers on speakers. But this shit is still gonna be heaps fun, son. You might be wondering what drove this sudden urge to just randomly start refoaming speakers, and for good reason I suppose, I mean it is kind of an odd thing to just pick up out of the blue. It comes part and parcel with a sudden unexplained urge to piece together a vintage console stereo system. I'm talking about a full blown, ballin'-ass, woodgrain cabinet, analog dial, warm incandescent lit 70's era stereo component system. Oh yeah, I know, who doesn't want that setup, right? The only problem with building such a setup is the physical deterioration these components suffer at the hands of Father Time. This isn't an issue with the stereo receivers and components as much as it is with the speakers. A blast from some Deoxit on the switches and rheostats, and most components are good to go, but speakers need a little bit more help. The problem with them is the foam surrounds that serve as the speakers suspension become brittle over time and eventually crack and split. I personally blame MC Hammer. It was Hammer Time that blew out all of the woofers that had the misfortune of living through the early nineties. The end goal here is to buy a set of old Bose 501 floor speakers and restore them for my future ballin' console system. I think that they epitomize the the 70's era floor speaker in every way.

Oh yeah, the Bose 501. Sexy. So fuggin' sexy.

They are wood veneered, they have the beige/brown cloth covers, and they just look the part. But before I commit money to a set of 501s and fuck them up beyond belief trying to "learn" on them, I'm gonna experiment on a more modern set of Infinity Sterling SS-2002s that I bought from the Habitat store for $4.99. I am currently waiting on my surround kit to arrive from the nether reaches of eBay, but here is how the project is starting off.

Infinity Sterling SS-2002s. $5 for a pair. A good starting point.

Here is the separation of the foam surround on the woofer.

The 6.5" woofer was carefully coaxed from the speaker.

The old surround was removed from the basket and cone and a bit of isopropyl alcohol was used to remove the old adhesive.

I removed as much adhesive from the cone as I was comfortable with. I was scared to go gnat's ass on it for fear of damaging the cone.

Well, the saga will end here for now. Hopefully when the parts arrive in the mail, everything will go together like it's supposed to. My only fear is that I have to complete this task without shimming the voice coil because I am scared to cut the dust cover from the voice coil. That is the proper way to do it, cut the dust cover off, shim the voice coil so it is perfectly centered, then adhere the new surround. Right way, wrong way, my way. Guess which one I'm gonna choose. To be continued.........