Repairing speaker baskets

[johndenim]

Hi.

I have a 12" Peavey speaker (112xt bass cab) that has become open circuit.

 

One side of the coil has come away from the 'filament strip'.(?)

Is there any way I can repair this myself?

If I had some conductive glue I think it could be done.

Is there such a thing?

 

The thing can't be soldered. :blink:

[Simon Lewis]

John,

 

It's unlikely that a repair can be easily carried out - even though the flexible braid wire will actually have been soldered to the ends of the coil at manufacture. You could always have a go at soldering though - there is little to lose by doing so.

 

Conductive glue is unlikely to work, as the maximum coil temperature will probably exceed the glue's breakdown temperature.

 

From memory, many Peavey drivers had field replaceable cones? It may be worth investigating this, or simply sending it for repair to those good folks at Corby...

 

Simon

[KevinE]

I doubt you'll have much success, the clearance between the magnet and coil is very small at the best of times. Just buy a new basket from Peavey, they're not dear.

[johndenim]

Cheers guys.

I was trying to avoid buying a new basket, I know they are easily replaceable, I have done a couple in the past.

 

I have tried to resolder but the braid just won't stick to the coil.

Maybe its made with really high temperature solder?

 

As Kevin E says, the clearance is pretty small.

It does seem a shame as the two parts meet quite nicely, but are just not connected together!

The basket wasn't that old when it went OC, I should have taken it back at the time.

The coil is not blackened or anything like that, its just failed.

[KevinE]

It may be welded to the coil, I dont know, have you given it a scrape? I'm sure I repaired one a few years ago by soldering and it worked but didnt dare return it to the customer in case it failed again...so its probably on my shelf somewhere.

[fogg]

I seem to remember fixing a peavey scorpion speaker that had this problem. You need a special solder as I beleive the coil is aluminium based. I think I got he solder from cpc. Fixed the driver a good 4 years ago and its still chugging away in a friends bass combo.

 

Worth a try I guess!

[Sound In Gloucestershire]

had this happen many times with peavey drivers, especially the new design

 

not alot you can do, although if purchased in the last 12 months, we sent them back because they were defective

[mitchiemasha]

I was asked to explain my easy fixes.

 

I've had a few baskets fail on me and been given many faulty ones. as they are already broke I never feared playing about with them. I had no knowledge about speakers at the time and often managed to fix them.

 

A nasty crackerling speaker. If whilst turned off you push the cone gently in and out and its clearly not coil scraping, it can be a tail fault. The tail although apears to still be connected may have fraid. The problem, when the speaker is sat in it's normal position the tail is fine, current passes through the coil and causes the speaker to move. When the speaker moves the tail loses it's connection (open circuit) the coil loses its current and the speaker drops back to its normal possistion. At this the tail reconects on its self again, current passes through the coil and on and on and on. I've seen this loads of times on all different makes. I find the faulty tail and cover it with solder at the faulty area, usealy next to the cone (be very careful) or next to the back of the socket. it works, a quick fix, adding many more months if not years to your basket.

 

The tail may have come off all together, if it's at the cone end it's much harder to fix. The socket end, I just usealy solder on a lil metal loop what you crimp on cables, to the back of the socket (the part the tail was originaly soldered too). this extends the back of the socket so you now have enough length to resolder the tail to it.

 

My terms may be incorrect as I'm self taught.

 

If you have no coil scrapping & no tail fault try this, remove your basket from the magnet, insert a multimeter in the sockets red/red black/black not that it matters which for this test. use the multimeter on the buzz test as my mate calls it. The one where the multimeter buzzes when you touch both the red and black pens together. See inside the coil where the glue/black rubbery bit is, the under side of the dust cap. Push this about in a few directions and you may be suprised to hear your multi meter starts to buzz. You have found the open circuit. use a scalpel to remove the black/rubbery stuff and you may well find that the flat copper strip has snapped, where it folds accros the ??? lower part of what the coil raps round. I myself used solder to fix this, it wasnt the easiest solder joint I've made and it may not be a safe fix. Try googling, ppl might recomend a certain glue or type of solder. I imagine it will get very hot here so I'm not 100%. The cones I've dun this fix to have only been out twice since aswell unlike my other fixes. I'm waiting on the road test for the results on how good this fix may be.

 

The tail fixes I've made have never failed and are still going till this very day, under lots of abuse too. My attempts on the tail fix cone end havent been too good, I made mistakes during the prosses. If I had 1 now that end to fix, I recon I could do it. I got very close wit a B&C 15" driver but I wont go into the details as the post is long enough.

[mutley]

The wire used to make the coil will be insulated with an enamel coating. Otherwise, you would simply have a copper tube, rather than a coil...

To solder to this wire, you will need to remove the enamel first. You can do this by either:

 

a) scraping the wire with a sharp blade or wet-n-dry.

b) putting it on the hot soldering iron tip for long enough to burn the coating off (normally about 30 secs)

 

Also, depending on the metal used, you may need special solder which will solder aluminium, and other "not-normally-solderable" metals. Some 5-core fluxed multicore solder will do this, but check first.

 

What I have done in the past when fixing a tweeter driver, is actually uncoil one turn of wire from the coil, to get the extra length needed to solder it. The length taken off is so negligable in comparison to the total length left on the coil, that it makes no noticable difference to the operation of the speaker.

 

EDIT: Aluminium solder £22.35 @ CPC

[johndenim]

The wire used to make the coil will be insulated with an enamel coating. Otherwise, you would simply have a copper tube, rather than a coil...

To solder to this wire, you will need to remove the enamel first. You can do this by either:

 

a) scraping the wire with a sharp blade or wet-n-dry.

b) putting it on the hot soldering iron tip for long enough to burn the coating off (normally about 30 secs)

 

 

What I have done in the past when fixing a tweeter driver, is actually uncoil one turn of wire from the coil, to get the extra length needed to solder it. The length taken off is so negligable in comparison to the total length left on the coil, that it makes no noticable difference to the operation of the speaker.

 

EDIT: Aluminium solder £22.35 @ CPC

 

All of the above!

 

I have scraped off the enamel, but got the same results, also, I had un-wound one turn, the impedance was not affected as you say.

 

 

The special solder is what I need, thanks.

[djandydee]

From memory the coil is made from aluminium wire - that is why it doesnt solder. It is crimped at manufacture.

 

I had a Peavey basket which did all of the above - don't waste time on it, get a new one - they are about 80 quid.