tmsears
Active Member
A few years back I had purchased two pairs of EPI M100 speakers in walnut veneer that were a part of an old quad setup on CL. The cabinets were in good shape but the all the woofers except one had their rubber surrounds turn into plastic for a lack of a better description.
I purchased new foam surround kits, grill cloth, and foam preservation glue from Simply Speakers. Dayton audio 10uf polypropylene caps, 5 way binding posts, terminals, and 16ga stranded hookup wire were purchased from Parts Express.
With all the parts in I went to work on the woofers first. I have never seen woofers assembled with the gaskets glued to the baskets then the surrounds to the gaskets. They're was a layer of something slathered on top of the rubber surrounds for good measure I guess. There was so much glue where the surrounds meet the cones that even with a hot air gun I barely got the surrounds removed without ruining the cones - even then I had a little bit of the top layer of paper lift off with the old surrounds. Needless to say the gaskets did not survive. Here is a pic of one of the cleaned and re-dyed cones:
I was nervous doing the first two surrounds but they turned out alright. I tested them on a function generator and there was no rubbing so I think I did alright.
A pic of the first two woofers before I discovered that cone dyeing was a thing:
I dyed all four cones as they looked pretty ratty and finished up the surrounds on the other two. All four woofers came out great with no rubbing thanks to the helpful videos that Simply Speakers put up on YouTube. I re-sprayed the tweeter's masonite rings with satin black but forgot to take close up shots (sorry).
I then went to work on the cabinets.
I removed the old glue from the fronts and sanded down the biggest imperfections then hand painted them with flat black enamel. I also installed some braces made from dowl rods using liquid nails. I then used #0000 steel wool and Howard's Restore-A-Finish on the walnut veneer and followed up with Howard's Feed-N-Wax. Then I re-wired the cross-overs and good the terminal plates back in. I think they turned out pretty good:
The original fiberglass batting pretty much disentegrated when I pulled it out to do the braces so I replaced it with poly-fill I bought at Walmart, using .75 lbs for the internal .75 cubic feet volume using a generic formula found on the web:
I then applied the foam protector to the surrounds while I waited on new gaskets to arrive.
Once the new gaskets arrived from Simply Speakers I glued them down to the woofers. They fit but they are snug. I then cleaned up the grills and re-covered them with the new grill cloth. Once that was done I dropped in the woofers and tweeters:
I then put the two best speakers up on my speaker shelfs and hooked then up to my Yamaha M4/C6 setup. I figured these newly renovated EPI's would surely best the pair of Advent/3's they were destined to replace. I was wrong.
The highs sound ok, if not what I was used to, but where did the low's go?.. They are partially there but allot of the range is no where to be found. For example, the cello in Carly Simon's "Embrace Me You Child" is almost completely gone. Any othermusic sounds equally terrible. I am no audiophile; I couldn't afford to be . But something is wrong if all the reviews and praise I have read on numerous forums including this one are to be believed.
If anyone had experience working on these speakers could come in and tell me what I did wrong and how to correct it, I would be forever grateful .
I purchased new foam surround kits, grill cloth, and foam preservation glue from Simply Speakers. Dayton audio 10uf polypropylene caps, 5 way binding posts, terminals, and 16ga stranded hookup wire were purchased from Parts Express.
With all the parts in I went to work on the woofers first. I have never seen woofers assembled with the gaskets glued to the baskets then the surrounds to the gaskets. They're was a layer of something slathered on top of the rubber surrounds for good measure I guess. There was so much glue where the surrounds meet the cones that even with a hot air gun I barely got the surrounds removed without ruining the cones - even then I had a little bit of the top layer of paper lift off with the old surrounds. Needless to say the gaskets did not survive. Here is a pic of one of the cleaned and re-dyed cones:
I was nervous doing the first two surrounds but they turned out alright. I tested them on a function generator and there was no rubbing so I think I did alright.
A pic of the first two woofers before I discovered that cone dyeing was a thing:
I dyed all four cones as they looked pretty ratty and finished up the surrounds on the other two. All four woofers came out great with no rubbing thanks to the helpful videos that Simply Speakers put up on YouTube. I re-sprayed the tweeter's masonite rings with satin black but forgot to take close up shots (sorry).
I then went to work on the cabinets.
I removed the old glue from the fronts and sanded down the biggest imperfections then hand painted them with flat black enamel. I also installed some braces made from dowl rods using liquid nails. I then used #0000 steel wool and Howard's Restore-A-Finish on the walnut veneer and followed up with Howard's Feed-N-Wax. Then I re-wired the cross-overs and good the terminal plates back in. I think they turned out pretty good:
The original fiberglass batting pretty much disentegrated when I pulled it out to do the braces so I replaced it with poly-fill I bought at Walmart, using .75 lbs for the internal .75 cubic feet volume using a generic formula found on the web:
I then applied the foam protector to the surrounds while I waited on new gaskets to arrive.
Once the new gaskets arrived from Simply Speakers I glued them down to the woofers. They fit but they are snug. I then cleaned up the grills and re-covered them with the new grill cloth. Once that was done I dropped in the woofers and tweeters:
I then put the two best speakers up on my speaker shelfs and hooked then up to my Yamaha M4/C6 setup. I figured these newly renovated EPI's would surely best the pair of Advent/3's they were destined to replace. I was wrong.
The highs sound ok, if not what I was used to, but where did the low's go?.. They are partially there but allot of the range is no where to be found. For example, the cello in Carly Simon's "Embrace Me You Child" is almost completely gone. Any othermusic sounds equally terrible. I am no audiophile; I couldn't afford to be . But something is wrong if all the reviews and praise I have read on numerous forums including this one are to be believed.
If anyone had experience working on these speakers could come in and tell me what I did wrong and how to correct it, I would be forever grateful .
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