I recently refurbished a set of Penta's for a client, who insisted on having the mid-units replaced, instead of refoaming. So I replaced all 8 units with new ones (ordered directly from B&O). After finishing the job, I was able to compare a refoamed Penta, against the replaced Penta. I (and my colleaques) could not hear any difference between the two sets.

So in my view refoaming is as good as replacing (provided the refoaming job is done well)

That's good news for me, thanks, I ordered the rubber rings in Netherlands and hope to get them next week, I'll let you know how easy (or not..) the job will be! 🙂

Yesterday, I was cleaning the bottom of my PentaVox and found a masked Powerlink input: do you guys think that this feeds the display directly?

Question is: if I can find a display (or 2, one for each BeoVox), mount it in the BeoVox cabinet and plug it via Powerlink, will the display be powered from Powerlink, or do I need an AC power source to make it work?😕

Yes this feeds directly to the display. Behind the plastic front (inbetween the two front grills) you'll find the other end, with a connector attached. If you can find the original LCD display's, you can connect them directly to that connector and mount them behind the translucent front. Plug the bottom connector directly in a powerlink and the display's will work. No soldering or external AC required!

Regarding the rubber surrounds:

It is very easy to do, providing you take your time and don't rush the job. The visually most appealing way of mounting the surrounds, is behind the speakercone. Mounting them on top of the cone is easier, but does not look as proffesional. Soundwise there is no difference between the two ways of mounting the surround.

Example 1: Here the inner edge of the surround is mounted on top of the speakercone:

Example 2: Here the inner edge of the surround is mounted on the back of the speakercone:

Mounting the inner edge of the surround is a bit harder to do, but absolutly not impossible. I would advise you to use waterproof woodglue. This takes a bit loner to dry, so it gives you some time to adjust and if necessary refit the surround. As the glue dries, it becomes transparant, so if you spoiled some, or used to much, it is hardly visible.

Succes with your project!

Great, thanks for the advise and the detailed pictures!🙂

I found on Internet a pair of BeoLab 200 at a reasonable price, is it possible to simply screw them at the bottom of a BeoVox, and make the BeoVox become a true BeoLab Penta with proper Powerlink connections? Or is it not so easy to do...?

You wrote:
"The visually most appealing way of mounting the surrounds, is behind the speakercone. Mounting them on top of the cone is easier, but does not look as proffesional. Soundwise there is no difference between the two ways of mounting the surround."

Visually appealing maybe, but technically quite important to get it right, I'm afraid.
The surrounds need to let the cone rest perfectly unstressed (with no signal). The cone should not be pulled out
or pushed in for the surround to grip the cone edge.
If it's offset to one side, you will get distortion since the cone will move easier one way than the other
because of the introduced pre-tension.
Since this is a midrange driver with fairly small coil movements when playing, even the slighthest offset
will cause distortion and in this case you have a whole millimeter or so, which is quite a bit of offset
for a midrange. A midrange distortion of 4-5% (often more) is far away from anything you could call high-end.
Not hard to understand, I think.

I've bought from a large dealer in Holland a couple of times and am not impressed.
Two different sets of surrounds, both guaranteed to fit 100% on the same B&O woofers was returned and
it was not the first time, I got my money back.

The cheap china surrounds that you often see listed on Ebay and elsewhere are mostly no good.
I've tried several and had surrounds with inner lips pointing upwards (from Holland), 8-inch surrounds that
were more than 10mm oval, loads of surrounds with incorrect sizes plus some with wrong
axial placement of the inner lip, making it impossible to axially set the cone at rest.
You cannot do a satisfying job with any of this.
I am not saying that all Ebay sellers sell junk but a good handrule is that a good quality surround
is in the GBP 15-20 range/each (plus packing/postage/customs/VAT etc.) and typically comes with proper cement
and a new dustcap to mount after coil aligning.
This is not too far from the cost of having the drivers done by a pro, which is what I would recommend to anyone.

BTW: How did you realign the coil/spider ?
I'm asking because the dustcaps look undisturbed.

Martin

Chrisreunion wrote:

Great, thanks for the advise and the detailed pictures!🙂

I found on Internet a pair of BeoLab 200 at a reasonable price, is it possible to simply screw them at the bottom of a BeoVox, and make the BeoVox become a true BeoLab Penta with proper Powerlink connections? Or is it not so easy to do...?

Fitting the Beolab 200 is extremly easy. Unscrew the bottom mirror (5 screws). Connect the speakercables from the 200 to the terminals on the bottom of  the penta's, and hook up the Beolink cable. Screw the 200 to the bottom of the Penta, using the same mounting holes which held the mirror bottom in place. Screw the mirror bottom to the bottom of the 200 and you are done! 30 min job max per speaker.

Chasepoes wrote:

Chrisreunion wrote:

Great, thanks for the advise and the detailed pictures!🙂

I found on Internet a pair of BeoLab 200 at a reasonable price, is it possible to simply screw them at the bottom of a BeoVox, and make the BeoVox become a true BeoLab Penta with proper Powerlink connections? Or is it not so easy to do...?

Fitting the Beolab 200 is extremly easy. Unscrew the bottom mirror (5 screws). Connect the speakercables from the 200 to the terminals on the bottom of  the penta's, and hook up the Beolink cable. Screw the 200 to the bottom of the Penta, using the same mounting holes which held the mirror bottom in place. Screw the mirror bottom to the bottom of the 200 and you are done! 30 min job max per speaker.

Only problem is you lose the displays, as the Beovox Pentas' display panels are empty. Maybe it would be easier just to find some Beolabs?

But he already found some display's if I'm not mistaken.

In reply to Dillen. Realligning the spider is not necessary with these units, 98 times out of a 100 times. The spider in these units is strong enough to hold the conus in place, even without a surround. I've refurbished hundreds of speakers (Used to work at a speaker\stereo repair\refurbish firm) and spiders usually only need realligning in big woofers). If you replace the surrounds the way it should be done, there is no way of introducing 'pre-tension' in the speaker. If done right, it's done exactly the same way as the manufacturer does.

The units I repair now for my hobby (I've moved to a differnt proffesion some time ago), undergo rigorous test and are driven wel beyond what they would encounter in everyday use, before they are claimed to be repaired. I've yet to come across a Penta mid-unit that was not repairable ore needed a realignment of the spider. (not to say, they don't exist). I've ABX repaired Penta's many times against Penta's with replaced units. So far, no one has been able to tell the difference.

Repairing costs about $5 in materials per unit (and about a day's work, mostly waiting for the glue to dry), as replacing costs about $50 per unit. A no-brainer in my opinion. I can't comment on the quality of E-bay surrounds, because I never used them. The surrounds I order from the formerly posted webshop fit fine and are consistent in quality and finish (I'm no affiliate by the way). There is another supplyer that I use, but it does not deliver overseas. The surrounds posted fit extremly well, the only 'but' is, that the outer diameter is about 1mm to small, compared to the original surround. This however posses no problems what so ever in fitting the surround. The inner diameter and all other dimensions are spot on.

For the moment I found a pair of BeoLab 200 that would fit below the BeoVox, I'm still looking for second hand displays, if they exist, otherwise I might follow the route with Ridax's displays, hoping one of them will fit inside the Penta and the wiring is not too complex; this will be step 3, for the moment I'm waiting for the midrange rubber rings, to focus on the speakers, silver soldering all cables at the back of each unit, refoaming the mids, and reversing the mid-treble cabinet in one Penta (to make it completely symetrical, and this was so easy, I wonder why B&O didn't pair the speakers from the beginning..).

2nd step will be adding the BeoLab 200 (I presently have a BeoCenter 9000, will it really make a big difference? I guess you will all say "yes, huge difference"!!).

3rd step will be the displays.

Final step would be replacing the Lab 200 amps by ICE amps if one day they "melt" like the ones found in this thread..😉