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In Reply to: RE: So I'm re-foaming a pair of Thiel 04a Speakers... posted by MannyE on July 17, 2016 at 18:18:23
Sweet -MannyE.
keep me posted on your project. Post more pics!
Follow Ups:
Foam is arriving tomorrow. The very nice guy at Thiel (the customer service really is amazing) had a lengthy conversation with me about the glue he uses. Says it's industrial and only available by the gallon. Right he was. According to his description they use this:
http://www.rgr.ie/media/wysiwyg/SW40_DS_ENG_GB_10.2006.pdf
Which is very difficult to find here in the states, and then only available in very large (over $300 a gallon) quantities. He told me to stay away from cyanoacrylates because they will dissolve the foam.
I'm hoping the glue that comes with Simply Speakers surrounds, of which I have like 5 or 6 tubes sitting in a drawer, will be good enough. It says it's good for bonding foam to plastic so we should be OK.
I guess I'm betting $50 that this will work. If not, I have to send the entire woofer back to Thiel which will cost $220. Well, $200 because I will beg for a refund on the remaining surround if the Simply Speakers glue eats it!
:)
Good news is the Simply Speakers glue is perfect for the job. It creates an almost instant bond with the foam and the plastic cone without hurting either the cone or the foam. Bad news is that instant bond! Very little if any working time after the two come together. I had started by testing a small drop on the edge of the foam so after it didn't dissolve anythjng I went ahead and applied the glue to the foam instead of the way I usually do it which is applying to the edge of the cone. It makes for a very clean install. It also means you need to drop the foam on there centered because 30 seconds later you're bonded pretty tight. In the pictures if you look closely at the one on the right, I haven't realized that yet and had a moment of panic. So not the cleanest work. On the left it came out beautiful. Very little seepage despite total coverage on the flat part of the foam. Listening and final pics will come in about an hour.
A word about the packing job. These guys are obsessive. I am including a few snaps of the box these two foam surrounds came in. Like the speakers themselves, way overbuilt! :)
Beautiful pics! Feel free to post more...
Good luck. It will be fun and rewarding. I hope you enjoy them when done.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
Pictures will be posted. According to the UPS email...they are on the truck and on the way to me! I will either be listening tonight and toasting them with a nice smokey Balmore single malt or drowning my sorrows with a few beers.
Foam arrived today and I have to say that the Thiel reputation for overdoing things was evident in the packing. Holy shit dudes.
I quickly tested a little bit of the glue on it and then proceeded to go ahead and apply glue to the whole edge. That's backwards from the way I usually do it, but after this experience and how clean the results were, I may do it like this from now on.
It took about ten minutes to complete both woofers. I can say that the Simply Speakers glue works perfectly well. Too well! It usually has about 60 to 90 seconds work time to center everything but on this particular plastic the bond was instant. NO work time at all. If you look at the completed woofers, you can see the one on the right has a not so clean edge where I panicked a little but got it up in time. The one on the left came out flawless once I knew to be careful placing the surround.
There's no other way to say it. Get those grills on ASAP. These guys DO not look pretty without grills. I suspect that was done on purpose as the grill seems to seal to the enclosure and has a surrounding structure that goes tightly around the tweeter. Those strips on the side are made of some kind of thick sticky foam that seal the mid as well.
Here they are in the room. That's not where they go, but I am playing around with placement. I hooked them up to my RR2150 and Sony PS-X5 and wow! I love them. I initially played Steely Dan AJA and then threw on some Mozart quartet stuff and then Santana...all at moderate volume. I will wait until tomorrow to really crank it.
They are so far the best speakers I have found on my thrift/CL searches. A total of $125 bucks and two hours of time invested has yielded a very nice pair of speakers. Soon I will try the MMF-5 with the Goldring 1012GX cart through the Outlaw and see how that sounds. If you see a pair, buy them!
Beautiful pics!
Put your lips on the pushed in tweeter and you can suck it back out. Done it several tomes.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
Haha. If at first you don't succeed keep trying until you suck seed, eh? I have a contraption I made out of a thin tube and some felt (so that it doesn't slam into the fabric) which I employ to do just that. Works great.
Eventually I will get to the dust cap on that tweeter. That will be when I recap the crossovers. I'm having too much fun listening to them right now!
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