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boston tweeter decision


Guest Jay5000

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Guest Jay5000

Hi all, I'm new to this forum, but have been goofing around with audio for a while.

Here's my dilemma.

I won an ebay auction yesterday for a pair of tweeters for my boston A100's, $27

A person who won the bids for the woofers and midrange drivers from the A150s from the same vendor has offered me $40 for the tweeters. I can sympathize with the buyer, he'd be getting the correct tweeters, save on shipping, and presumably get on with his project.

At the same time I'd like to hear my A100's but I'm in no rush, need to refoam the woofers, don't have the foams on hand.

Is $27 for these tweeters a good deal, do they come up on ebay very often? Looking at completed sales shows nothing. I won the auction for the first pair of these tweeters I looked for and have no idea about how common they are or what the price should be, $27 seemed reasonable......

As I said I'm in no hurry to repair my A100s, bought them for possible future home theater use with my A150s which I think sound wonderfull. That would make for sweet home theater sound, wouldn't it?

what to do, what to do....

cheers, Jay

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Guest WillinAustin

Hi Folks -

Hey just think what a spot that other guy is in... all the other drivers and crossovers but no tweeters! That's a problem! Well actually, that would be me. I'm the guy... I just could resist the coincidence here. I was doing another search on A 150s and happened to get this page. Small world! I should have padded my final bid a bit more. Nice move there at the last minute you sly dog you!

Do you mind if I ask a couple questions here if I promise not to try and talk Jay out of those nice tweeters? Actually didn'T the original A100 have a different tweeter I thought? (just kidding:-)

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Guest WillinAustin

My project is to build my own cabinets for the A150 drivers and crossover. ( so you see I have some time to find another set of tweeters) I want to build a couple of my own cabinet designs and I thought I'd start with these drivers.

One question I have is about the tweeters from the Boston Acoustics HD line of bookshelf speakers. I have been using a pair of the HD8s which I really like (similar to the A70s). I have recently acquired a pair of the HD9s with deteriorated foams on the woofers. I was thinking I would pull the tweeters from those. Does anyone know weather the tweeters for theses different lines are all that different?

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Guest WillinAustin

Just a foot note:

After doing a little more research tonight I did find out that the tweeters from the HD9's are a perfect sub for the original A150 tweeters. So I'm in luck there. I also found another pair of A150's that have the familiar bad foam problem and I'm thinking of trying to purchase those. If I do end up buying them I will probably re-build the old 150's for now until my cabinet project actually becomes a reality!

Jay - as you probably have found out there are a number of sources for buying the foam replacements for your woofers. I would recommend buying them directly from the supplier rather than from an ebay seller. You may benefit from the advise of the people who actually make the repair kits if you haven't done that before. I've never done the procedure myself but I'll bet there are a few tricks to making it easier and getting it right the first time.

Hope you enjoy your A100's when you finish your upgade! Will

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Guest Jay5000

Ah ha, the culprit confesses! Prepare thyself for blather! Sorry Will, but I guess you're still looking. I'm pleased to see you that you have a sense of humor about it, just about fell off my chair when I saw your post!

Send me your email & if I see another pair of tweeters I'll give you a heads up.

Thanks to Vern too.

I sure appreciate the helpful attitude here, repairing stuff is sort of a hobby for me, David Lee a vancouver speaker repair guru and a hell of a nice guy showed me how to refoam speakers maybe 10 years ago, I've done ~6 pair since then. Here's my 2 cents on refoaming.

can't imagine using white (pva) glue, seems like it would be a slippery, slow drying pain in the ass, seems like maybe it would damage the speaker trying to get it off on the next refoam

JBL glue seems good, solvent based, I'm out & not sure where to get more.

Practice on junk, send it to David Lee if it's valuable.

two refoam methods I use,

a)cut the cap, shim the coil & glue the foam, thin cardboard recipe card (file card) stock makes nice shims

;) use a signal generator and a low frequency to feed the driver & make the cone bounce up & down, fine if you have a signal generator, I don't. Here's an idea....

Download a test tone from the net, easy to find, open a 20hz tone with a sound editor, copy & paste the tone to a usable length, 15 minutes or so. Burn it to a cd, play it through a stereo on your bench. So, glue the foam to the cone, let it set, glue the outer edge of the foam, hook up the speaker to your bench stereo/signal generator, as the cone flops up and down you can position the foam's outer edge, listening for any rubs between the voice coil & magnet pole center the cone by adjusting the outer foam before the glue sets. The advantage is you don't have to hack up the center cap. It's slightly tricky, and maybe doesn't work as well as shims. One of the goals is to avoid shorting the speaker wires as you connect and disconnect the driver you're working on!

Of course you can burn cds with other test tones and see how they sound on various speakers, no merit to it that I can see, but kinda fun.

Encourage thrift store in local upscale neighborhoods not to discard speakers with bad foams.

Also, it appears foams from Mat electronics are a good deal, a very good deal, $1 to $3 each, makes one wonder just where all those ebay resellers get their stock that they sell for $30/pair .........

Anyone here have experience with foams from Mat?

BTW do you folks like the A100 or A150 better?

cheers, Jay

Ps. If it makes you feel any better Will, today I'm kicking myself for not buying a $10 pair or burhoe blues with incorrect woofers at a garage sale on the weekend. Damm, what if they had carefully selected replacement woofers? Sure would have been a nice addition to my unnecessary collection of previously discarded new england speakers, damm.

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  • 1 year later...
Hi Folks -

Hey just think what a spot that other guy is in... all the other drivers and crossovers but no tweeters! That's a problem! Well actually, that would be me. I'm the guy... I just could resist the coincidence here. I was doing another search on A 150s and happened to get this page. Small world! I should have padded my final bid a bit more. Nice move there at the last minute you sly dog you!

Do you mind if I ask a couple questions here if I promise not to try and talk Jay out of those nice tweeters? Actually didn'T the original A100 have a different tweeter I thought? (just kidding:-)

The A150 I had the seas 241 tweeter (round, face+dome/coil from norway), the SERIES II had the CFT 1, and the series III had the CFT 5. All soft domes. The last two had rect face plates. The seas 241 was a very flat, natural sound, the CFT 1 had a similar sound, but all made at BA. When they got to the CFT 5, they added a slight trough/indentation in the face plate,around the dome, which spiked the output at a given frequency, making it just a hair brighter, but sounded amazing.

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