Leslie wrote:
Martin, I've seen your pictures an they look worse! What do you think these kind of people would handle when using the shimming method. They should keep their hands off refoaming at all!
Yes.
As said, not all people are cut out for DIY. Some are definitely NOT.
Only last week, an owner told me "The screwdriver slipped when I took the woofer out...".
*sigh*.
What may seem a piece of cake to you may be quite a task for someone else, maybe downright impossible.
CX50/100 are not too tight but I can assure you, it CAN go wrong if you don't shim them.
If the drivers played (or just stood) for a long time with bad surrounds, the weight of
the cone etc. will deform the spider (and sometimes even the cone itself). Not a lot, not even visible
but enough to cause the coil former to start rubbing a couple of weeks after being refoam'ed when things
are slowly settling again.
In severe cases, that can happen even if you shim'ed it. Therefore I often mark the drivers
with up and down and often ask the owners to do so too before sending drivers to me.
And why not shim ?
It's not particularly time consuming (this is hobby for us, right ?), it's not particularly difficult and
it's not even expensive and it does give you a better chance of success.
The general advice, I think, should be:
- If you feel, you are very good with DIY jobs and have a good "mechanical feeling and touch", you
may be able to refoam speaker drivers yourself. Aligning the coil is what the factory did and it's
highly adviceable to do the same.
However, if you, while you work, suddenly feel that you are in too deep or face an unexpected issue - STOP!
- If you don't feel 100% up to the task, leave it someone who is, right from the beginning.
Prof refoam'ers are worth their cost and those unique B&O woofers are not too plentyful.
If you have to redo a refoam job for some reason, you will already have lost the amount of money a pro refoam costs.
Personally, and as a Beoworld Technical Advisor, my advice is to let someone do it for you.
Someone who has done hundreds before. Someone who don't need your woofers to be the
first ones to practice on.
Martin