Perhaps this page should be titled:  “Help us help you…”

It has occurred to us that we are not omniscient!  And, sometimes our customers are not sure how to approach us about a speaker or speaker system repair, and also of course do not know what might or might not be involved.  So, sometimes they assume we have sources of information (like repair manuals) for everything, on hand.  We do have quite a bit of information and accumulated knowledge, but compared to the thousands (probably tens of thousands) of speaker models that have been produced over the years, there is a good likelyhood that we do not have the manual or detailed information for your speaker.  Time being what it is, anything you can do to provide us with background or information about your speaker is likely to be helpful.  And perhaps we can do a little less repeating of ourselves, by making a few suggestions:

 
1)  Use our Contact Us form 1st. 

We don’t publish our e-mail address, to prevent being swamped with spam.  Contact Us and then we will reply to you by e-mail.  From there on out, e-mails usually work great.  Occaisionally though, e-mails to us do get filtered as spam, or, we get swamped, so if you do not get an e-mail from us in a week or so after sending us a message or an e-mail, try Contact Us again.
 

2)  Specs and other information can help!

Manufacturer’s specs (or reviews by competent reviewers who are able to do  good measurements), repair manuals, tech manuals (Infinity’s are helpful when they can be found, for example), pictures of what you have (cabinets and drivers, front and rear, etc., can all be helpful.  It may or may not be spotty, but often good information can be found on the Internet.

 
3)  We like to look at the pictures! 

Very often, pictures on the Internet are poor or too small, so, your* pictures can be most helpful.  This is especially true when trying to determine, for example, something like a tweeter mount.  If sending pics, please resize to keep the file sizes down to 500 kB max, and e-mails to 5 mB total, max, per day. 

 
4)  Go to the forum(s). 

Internet links with useful info. (often found on forums like diyaudio and audiokarma) can be useful, too.  Again, any time you can save us reduces your costs, and gets us to your repair faster.  If we’ve come across “that one” ten times before, that’s ok!  We’d rather do that occaisionally, than search Google or Bing for hours.  Forum page links are fine…

 
5)  The better the explanation…

Anything you can clearly tell us about why, how, or when a driver or drivers failed may be useful.  Which leads us to:
 

6)  What is your application?

This usually comes intop play “later”, but, the answers to “how are you using the speakers?”, “how big is your amp?”, “do you crank it up(?)”, “how big is the room?”, “do you boost the tone controls or eq.?”, “how are the speakers placed?”, etc., can all be helpful.  If you can clearly explain what is wrong with the drivers you have, or what the conditions were when they failed, that can help too!

 
7)  It helps if you can find (or trace out) accurate crossover schematics.

Plase keep in mind that manufacturers often make undocumented changes, so it helps if you can ascertain if a mfgr.’s data is all correct.  In many cases we have the customer send us the crossover, as very often it is best to not only check it, but sometimes modifications for best results with
new drivers help a lot.  (For example:  It may sound a little presumptious, but we’ve found that some mfgr.’s, even some well known ones, make basic mistakes that cause tweeters to fail before they should, etc.  Sometimes Paul just shakes his head!)

 
8)  Paul IS an engineer. 

Unfortunately, a few customers think that it suffices to “just stick in something close that fits.”  For our part, we assume you’ve contacted us because you want a better result than you’ll get from some half-tech who’ll stick a $4 (retail) piezo tweeter in your Snell Type J’s, leaving a half-inch gap around the frame, and charging you $49 for it!

Now don’t get us wrong, there are some excellent Chinese drivers around, and some great techs,  (and lots of bad ones of both, too).  And some piezo tweeters do have their uses, applied properly.  But, replacing a tweeter with “anything that fits” is no better than replacing a tire on your vehicle with “anything that fits” (and if you think the latter is true, we:  A) Sincerely hope that the worst that happens to you is premature tire wear; and B)  Suggest you spend a few hours over on the Tire Rack’s excellent website!)  Well, ok, a piezo tweeter isn’t dangerous, but improperly used it will likely “fry” your ears!

Worse, in a way, we just talked about manufacturers who often mis-apply drivers or take shortcuts.  We really don’t like to leave such issues unaddressed!  (For a longer read on this, check out why we do not recommend Infinity Polycell tweeter direct replacements (either the tweeter or the diaphragm) in some models of Infinity speaker systems that used that tweeter.

We really aren’t just being difficult!  We want you to have great sound for low, or at least reasonable cost.  And we want it to hold up for you, too!

 
9)  The environment is everything (to a driver).

No, we are not talking about car exhaust, automobile tires notwithstanding.   

What we mean is, a woofer, midrange, or tweeter’s performance is drastically affected by the baffle it is on.  Most people know a woofer’s bass response is affected by the cabinet it is in, and it’s location in a room,  but relatively few know that the baffle dimensions a driver is on can also have a large effect.  We’ll post a page of our own on this, one of these days, but for now, here is an excellent discussion:  http://customanalogue.com/elsinore/elsinore_2.htm  (Scroll down to “diffraction loss” at:  http://customanalogue.com/elsinore/elsinore_2.htm#Diffraction%20Loss .)  Paul has seen a driver’s response change by 8 dB total, going from it’s “test chamber” curve, to an actual cabinet, and that’s before room reflections come into play.  So, that is why baffle dimensions, driver locations, etc., are something we may ask you about, as we consider your repair, and what will work well for you. 

 
10)  You can talk to us.

If need be, you are welcome to call us:  We don’t give out our phone # until we have made a round or 2 of e-mails, though, as this helps keep us from being buried with calls @ inconvenient times.  We are a small operation and get stretched a little thin, sometimes!  Keep in mind though that technical details can be a bit hard to follow in a phone conversation.  So, there is a place for both e-mails (most of the time) and phone calls (occaisionally.)  Transaction details, proposals, etc.,  must always be confirmed by e-mail (the electronic “paper” trail.)

 (We can also schedule Internet chats through Yahoo, if you have Yahoo Messenger.

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We are working on “case studies” of some repair projects.  Hopefully we can get these documented nicely with photos and test results, and on the website soon. 

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Happy Listening!
 

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*Note:  Unless you ask otherwise, we will assume it is ok to publish your pictures on our web site, to assist others in their search(s) for assistance.  Photo submissions published on praudio.com will be kept anonymous, unless our customer requests that credit be given (which is ok, too!)