pete_mac

hello and welcome.

Thanks for joining ST. Welcome aboard.

welcome

Welcome to The Sound.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys!

I stumbled upon this place when browsing the net for info regarding refoaming woofers, so I thought I'd join up.

I recently scored a bunch of Onkyo separates and a nice set of early-mid 80's Energy ESM-2 speakers on ebay for $AUD22 which was quite the bargain. All of the equipment works beautifully and will make an awesome garage system (or a back-up to my main system). The surrounds on the woofers are long gone, so they will be refoamed very shortly. If all turns out well, I'll run them via the Sansui AU-417 in my main system. I'm holding fairly high hopes for these speakers, but for the price I paid it really won't be too painful if they turn out to be rubbish!

cheers
Pete

This post has been edited by pete_mac on June 10, 2009 11:56 pm

Hi, Welcome!

Have you found out what you needed to know regarding refoaming?

Jim

Hi Jim,

Yes, I've managed to find a large amount of advice and opinion on several forums thus far. If I encounter any dramas or need any further advice I now know where to come! I'll hopefully be able to post in the next week or so with the results of the refoam. I'm also praying that the ferrofluid-cooled tweeters aren't cactus. They certainly work fine at low volume levels, but I'm lead to believe that the ferrofluid can dry up over time and potentially lead to heat-reated dramas at higher volume/power levels. Time will tell I guess...

Hi Jim,

Yes, I've managed to find a large amount of advice and opinion on several forums thus far. If I encounter any dramas or need any further advice I now know where to come! I'll hopefully be able to post in the next week or so with the results of the refoam. I'm also praying that the ferrofluid-cooled tweeters aren't cactus. They certainly work fine at low volume levels, but I'm lead to believe that the ferrofluid can dry up over time and potentially lead to heat-reated dramas at higher volume/power levels. Time will tell I guess...

A little update regarding the above (I didn't think it was worthy of its own thread )

The refoam is complete and 100% successful! I grabbed some foam surrounds off ebay from the seller bootapest2 (it was only $USD10 including delivery to Australia) and acquired a bottle of Aleene's tacky glue locally.

I didn't bother removing the dust cap as the woofers seemed to have sufficient play in the voice coil to enable the cone and VC to be manually centred. This was confirmed after I had affixed the new surrounds to the cone, as the cone centred itself perfectly with minimal adjustment required.

All in all it was a pretty simple job with very satisfying results. The ESM-2s sound fantastic. I think I will wait until they have been used for several hours before fully assessing their sound (to ensure the surrounds are broken in) but the inital results are extremely pleasing.

sweet, pic's are always appreciated.

sweet, pic's are always appreciated.

Consider it done!

Again, I'm not sure whether I should be creating a new thread for this, but what the heck

Here's how the ESM-2s looks sans-woofer surrounds:




Here's the very technical part of the refoaming process using my medium-density polymer low-tension clamps (aka clothes pegs). The foam surround has already been glued to the cone in these pics. I used the clothes pegs to help keep the woofer surround in position after making minor adjustments to ensure the woofers were perfectly centred. I would then remove a few pegs, glue that section of the surround to the frame, replace the pegs, remove some adjacent pegs, and repeat the process:




And the finished result (they still need a good clean overall, and the camera flash reveals EVERY little mark/fault:




To give you a sense of the size of the speakers, the woofers are 8" (so they are floorstanding speakers rather than smaller bookshelf speakers).

I will also be refreshing the black grilles with some fresh grille cloth shortly. Once this is completed they will present VERY nicely for 22 year old speakers (as well as sounding great for a total investment of less than $AUD 50 incluing the surrounds, glue and grille cloth, and the stack of Onkyo gear that came with the speakers).

My Sansui AU-417 has the pleasure of driving the ESM-2s (it's in great condition for a 30 year old amplifier):

Very nice amp and a job well done with the speakers.
Tanx for sharing.

looks great, nice job

Great job, I love to see things repaired and brought back to life.

Jim

. Isn't just the teats when everything goes according to plan . Nice job.

Absolutely!!

The speakers are still performing flawlessly. I'm considering a re-cap of the crossovers (there's a good chance that the old electrolytics are out of spec) and will be making some DIY speaker stands shortly.