Loudspeaker Reconing

There are two kinds of musicians who use amplifiers, those who have blown a speaker and
those that will. There is only one kind of person who can remedy this condition, a Reconer.
Someone who knows how to recone loudspeakers properly is a valuable person. A Reconer
can save the day in about 30 minutes rather than 30 days. Contrary to popular belief, reconing
a loudspeaker is not as easy to do as some would have you believe. The mechanics of a
loudspeaker are very simple and it's discovery changed the direction of the air at the surface
of the earth! But that is where the easy ends. From the moment of its discovery, we have been
trying to perfect the loudspeaker and it's ability to produce the desired noise. Hey let's face it,
we like it loud and clear, mostly loud around here! Being a Reconer is much more than
putting parts together and gluing "em up. A loudspeaker suddenly becomes a very special
piece of equipment when you consider that your speakers are the "last chance" chin of
electronics a system has to sound great. Still, loudspeakers are continually overlooked as a
major player in almost every system for "the band" and repair to
your loudspeaker system is eminent. Any time you have moving
parts, you will have failures, that is where reconing comes in to
the picture.
There are actually 12 components that make up the loudspeaker.
They are the Basket, Top plate, Back plate, Pole piece, Magnet,
Cone, Voice coil, Spider, Dustcap, Gasket, Leadwire and
Terminal. When you look at a loudspeaker from the front you see the cone and dustcap, and it
looks like a speaker. If you look at the loudspeaker from the side you will see the bottom of
the cone has two wires coming out that run to the terminals. These two wires are the two ends
of a single wire. If you look a little closer, you will see the cone is attached to another piece at
the neck or bottom. This is called a Spider. The Spider is just as important as everyone of the
other components. For the most part, a loudspeaker will not work properly if any of these
components are weak or damaged. When your speakers blow, one of these have failed and
weakened the rest of the speakers' parts, causing total failure.
There are actually 7 parts that you need to recone a loudspeaker, a Cone, Voice coil, Spider,
Dust cap, Gasket, Leadwire and Shim. There is a fallacy that a heavy cone will produce better
bass. WRONG! There is also the fallacy that a stiff cone suspension means higher power
handling. WRONG AGAIN! The truth is that if the cone is heavy, it will not react quickly to
the input signal. Hence without the application of considerable wattage, the signal will be
gone from the line before the cone can move and thereby causing an undesirable noise, kind
of a flopping honk sound. Not to mention the other restrictions placed on a speaker with a
heavy cone. The same thing can happen with a suspension that is too stiff. When we are
designing a true and correct loudspeaker, we look for a cone with light components. We do
this because we want the amplifier to use as little power as possible to make the cone move
so it will produce the sound we amplify. When we think about a cone being made of paper,
most of the time, it is almost magic that it still works at all the next day given the abuse it gets
put through during a gig! When a cone is placed in a loudspeaker frame and assembled with
the other components, it is very strong. Holding a cone in your hand is by no means a
measure of it's quality. Only by "hands on" experience can you fully appreciate the strength
of a light cone. In many applications, even the dustcap adds a major stability factor to the
loudspeaker's cone. Only by "hands on" experience can you understand this, but it is the
absolute truth!



The dustcap also provides cooling air movement in the loading are of the loudspeaker to
literally keep the voice coil from becoming a heating element and causing a fire. Some of us
still find a way thought, don't we?! Did you know that a voice coil can reach temperatures of
400F during hard play? Don't believe me? After your next gig, put your hand on the magnet
of one of the loudspeakers in your cabinet. If you can keep your hand on it for 5 seconds and
not have a blister when you pull it away, you're not playing loud enough! 400F is nothing to
play with. It isn't on fire during play because of the ventilation designed in to the loading are
of the cone to vent the heat away. However, when you stop the heat is no longer being
dissipated and remains insulated in the loading cavity beneath the dust cap. It is now at the
highest potential for flame to occur. My point is, if someone recones a loudspeaker with so
much as the wrong dust cap, it can spell early failure of the reconed loudspeaker. Here is
where experience is your key to success. If a loudspeaker is reconed and fails, your faith in
reconing will certainly be blemished, as most of us who have had loudspeakers reconed
before know all too well.
When WVS began to offer their "Foundation of Understanding" video on loudspeaker
reconing in 1994, reconing had become the last alternative for sound. The reason for this is
the companies who were selling these reconing supplies were not keeping up with the
changing needs and component failure was at an all time high with reconed loudspeakers.
However, in 1994 there were new companies coming to the plate with high quality parts
designed to perform under today's demands. Once again reconing a loudspeaker was quickly
becoming the standard maintenance procedure for loudspeaker repair.

These past six years we have seen reconing move from the "Black Magic" secret, to a
preferred practice. All over the world people are taking their speaker systems into the repair
shop because they like the way they sounded before they broke. Originally you took your
speakers to a TV repair shop, now you take them to a company that specializes in reconing.
These specialty shops are fast becoming a player in the audio market. People who have
always wanted to have their own small side business
are getting educated and they are offering a
professional service to customers who otherwise
would be in the market for new speakers, spending 3-
4 times as much as they should.
In 1997 www.recone.com opened their web site to
help these businesses become more successful and offer customers the security of a small
group of professionals who love what they do, recone loudspeakers. "Driven to excellence by
the excitement of perfection." In 1999 the PARLAY (Professional Loudspeaker Reconers
Association) began to offer extended education on the process of loudspeaker reconing. This
was the beginning of setting standards for the reconing industry. WVS, www.recone.com and
the PLRA along with vendors and manufacturers of these reconing supplies have begun a
trend of standards that will last a long, long time.

Isn't it nice to know there is a group of people who care about your sound and success. Until
next month, turn it up, we need the work.
Where was I? WOW! lot's of questions and comments about the last reconing article. Good
ones by readers. When someone who has an intimate knowledge of a subject begins to tell
others about what they know, they can forget the basics. I mean the down to earth "what-do-
dis-do" stuff. Sorry if I included myself in that group. I received lots of questions about
speakers and reconing after the last article, so I would like to address them rather than plow
through what was originally planned.
Mark P. from I ndianapolis asks:
When one of the speakers in my 4-12 cabinet began to rattle I took the speaker in to be
reconed. When I got it back it sounds much louder. Is this because the other speakers in my
cabinet are worn out? Why does my newly reconed speaker
sound so much different from the other three speakers in my
guitar cabinet?

Mark, This is a problem especially with guitar players. First
consider the age of the speaker. If it is more than 20 years old
there is an age problem with the magnet half life. However,
that rarely makes much of a difference after 6-7 gigs on a
freshly reconed speaker. There is another issue. There are two
major components of a voice coil. The Former: This is the part of the voice coil that the
windings are wrapped on. Winding is either copper or aluminum or a combination of both.
For a long time coils were wrapped on aluminum. This was exclusively used in the after
market coils for years without question. For the most part, we use a plastic known as Kapton
as the Former for the voice coil these days. Kapton is light and very strong for the voice coil
application. In the mid 80's we noticed that aluminum formers took a major toll on the clarity
of the sound a speaker reproduces. An aluminum voice coil former seems to rob the high end
from the sound. This translates into a low transparency in the sound. Trouble was, in our
effort to get the highest quality sound possible from a speaker reconers stopped using
aluminum former voice coils in the speakers they rebuilt for customers at once. Thinking the
better sound was what customers wanted. What we ultimately
found was that the aluminum former was a sound musicians had
grown accustom to and had compensated for the loss of high end
in their EQ settings. Now then, Mark gets his speaker back from
the recone shop and it has all this new high end he didn't have
before and the speaker sounds much different from the rest. The
result is EQ frustration and rightfully so. You can take the speaker
back to the recone center and tell them what you are experiencing,
they know what to do to fix the clarity problem. If you take your speakers to a PLRA reconer,
they know how to make your old speaker sound like and old speaker even though it is
essentially brand new. Take this into consideration. It is just as likely to have your speaker
reconed and it looses the high end you have EQ'd for. In that case it is almost certain the
reconer used an aluminum former voice coil without thinking about it. Oop's. A PLRA
reconer will do the job over free of charge if this happens. It's a matter of asking. This isn't
the only reason for Mark's situation but more often than not, it is.
Sam G from Albany, NY asks:
My guitar amp puts out 100 watts. I have 2 12" 85 watt Celestions and although it doesn't
happen a lot, I am still at the recone shop 2-3 times a year. They tell me I am over powering
the speakers but that isn't true. If my Celestions can handle 85 watts a piece, they should be
able to handle 170 watts together shouldn't they? My amp only puts out 100 watts. Am I
having my chain yanked about this? This is getting old but I really like the sound.


Most speakers fail because they are under powered. Sounds wrong but, that is the way it is. If
you have an amplifier that puts out 100 watts of signal, you also have a DC power supply of
about 17 volts DC current when you turn it up to 10 or 11. If your amplifier puts out 17 vdc
you will light up the voice coils in your speakers like the light bulb in a flashlight. Speakers
do not handle DC voltage well at all. When you turn your amplifier up past it's rated output
you are sending DC voltage to the speakers and you will snuff them rascals. To the
inexperienced eye, the voice coil will look at the burnt voice coil and assume they were over
powered when the fact is, they were underpowered. The rule of thumb is this: Buy twice as
much power than your speakers can handle. Then when you turn your rig up, you will
experience "speaker distortion" which is a better sound by far when it comes to cranking up
the ol' amp. Try it, you'll like it. Speaker distortion is what we guitar players are after. Even
though we have become very dependent on electronics there is no substitute for good old
speaker grunt. You will still blow speakers from time to time but they will last longer and
sound much better.
Ask me anything!
Tom Colvin
PLRA: Driven to excellence by the excitement of perfection.
Turn it up, we need the work!


www.recone.com