lttnorth
New Member
Back in February, I found the elusive set on Craigslist somewhere in Florida. This came after about a year of searching, and this was the first pair I had ever personally seen up for sale. They were asking $100, and I was fortunate enough to have a good friend who lived close by, so he picked them up for me. They were in beautiful shape and still had the cloth covers. Aside from the plastic pegs that hold the covers on being snapped off, I couldn't have asked for a better-looking set.
Fast forward to May. I had to save up some cash to pay my friend to ship them out here to the west coast. I chose Fed Ex as it was the cheapest option by a small margin. $265 later, they were on their way. And sadly, this is where things took a disastrous turn. Fed Ex dropped one of them in transit, cracked the cabinet below the woofer and threw the driver out of alignment, causing major coil rub. I thought maybe I could fix it myself, perhaps adjusting the magnet on the back. That proved to be incredibly stupid as I only made it worse. So much so, in fact, that after I took the speaker in to get fixed, the shop said the damage was beyond repair. They replaced the woofer with a cheap $20 8-ohm one, and charged me $75 in the process. I was absolutely ticked.
This whole time, my friend had been fighting Fed Ex for me to at lease get a claim going for insurance payout. In late June he told me they ruled in my favor and would be paying out $480 total. Still, didn't fix the fact that I now had a bum pair of incredibly rare speakers. I am actually still waiting on that check to arrive; apparently Fed Ex can't even do their own logistics right and sent his checks to the wrong address, and the next time never sent them out at all because he didn't notify them of his new address (he did). Ever since I got the speakers back though I had been searching for a suitable replacement. A friend at work said he would "consider" selling me his Infinity Quantum 3s which were in mint shape. Honestly it's probably the better speaker but he was asking far too much, even with my potential insurance money. And until yesterday, I've been sitting here in limbo not knowing what else to do.
I guess out of habit, I check Craigslist to see if anything new pops up, even if it's something I already have. I typed in "MCS speakers" and to my disbelief, there was another pair of 8228 speakers for sale only 37 miles from my home. The guy said that he recently refoamed the woofers and was planning to do a full restoration of the crossovers and caps, but due to medical issues he could not finish and decided to off-load them for $140. I'm still amazed thinking back about this whole ordeal. I spent the better part of 7 months trying to obtain these dumb speakers and out of no where, another set just popped up. The cabinets are perfect, but of course there were a few hitches. The woofers have definitely been re-foamed and taken care of, but the mids and tweeters were kind of crappy looking. In fact, one of the tweeters wasn't even original (a fact I missed when I picked them up), and one of the mids appeared to be dead. Aside from that, the domes all were very dirty; I'm sure anyone familiar with these speakers know that the domes are yellowish orange and have that sunny-side-up fried egg look to them. But these were all very dark for some reason, as if someone rubbed motor oil over them. On top of that, the back side of the magnets on just about every mid had some serious rust issues (maybe not rust; There was a lot of this strange white powder collecting on the back of the magnets. My guess is some kind of moisture issue). I was fortunate enough that my previous set's mids and tweeters were all in fabulous shape, so I swapped every single one of them and now this set looks good as new.
So that's my story. I'm not sure what I'll do with the bum pair, maybe someone will want to part it out for crossovers or something. There's still at least one good woofer, three good mids and one tweeter. As far as where I should go from here to complete the restoration, I honestly am not savvy with speaker repair and could rely on someone with more knowledge, especially with these MCS speakers. I don't know what's in need of restoration and what I can probably just leave be.
More photos in the spoiler
Fast forward to May. I had to save up some cash to pay my friend to ship them out here to the west coast. I chose Fed Ex as it was the cheapest option by a small margin. $265 later, they were on their way. And sadly, this is where things took a disastrous turn. Fed Ex dropped one of them in transit, cracked the cabinet below the woofer and threw the driver out of alignment, causing major coil rub. I thought maybe I could fix it myself, perhaps adjusting the magnet on the back. That proved to be incredibly stupid as I only made it worse. So much so, in fact, that after I took the speaker in to get fixed, the shop said the damage was beyond repair. They replaced the woofer with a cheap $20 8-ohm one, and charged me $75 in the process. I was absolutely ticked.
This whole time, my friend had been fighting Fed Ex for me to at lease get a claim going for insurance payout. In late June he told me they ruled in my favor and would be paying out $480 total. Still, didn't fix the fact that I now had a bum pair of incredibly rare speakers. I am actually still waiting on that check to arrive; apparently Fed Ex can't even do their own logistics right and sent his checks to the wrong address, and the next time never sent them out at all because he didn't notify them of his new address (he did). Ever since I got the speakers back though I had been searching for a suitable replacement. A friend at work said he would "consider" selling me his Infinity Quantum 3s which were in mint shape. Honestly it's probably the better speaker but he was asking far too much, even with my potential insurance money. And until yesterday, I've been sitting here in limbo not knowing what else to do.
I guess out of habit, I check Craigslist to see if anything new pops up, even if it's something I already have. I typed in "MCS speakers" and to my disbelief, there was another pair of 8228 speakers for sale only 37 miles from my home. The guy said that he recently refoamed the woofers and was planning to do a full restoration of the crossovers and caps, but due to medical issues he could not finish and decided to off-load them for $140. I'm still amazed thinking back about this whole ordeal. I spent the better part of 7 months trying to obtain these dumb speakers and out of no where, another set just popped up. The cabinets are perfect, but of course there were a few hitches. The woofers have definitely been re-foamed and taken care of, but the mids and tweeters were kind of crappy looking. In fact, one of the tweeters wasn't even original (a fact I missed when I picked them up), and one of the mids appeared to be dead. Aside from that, the domes all were very dirty; I'm sure anyone familiar with these speakers know that the domes are yellowish orange and have that sunny-side-up fried egg look to them. But these were all very dark for some reason, as if someone rubbed motor oil over them. On top of that, the back side of the magnets on just about every mid had some serious rust issues (maybe not rust; There was a lot of this strange white powder collecting on the back of the magnets. My guess is some kind of moisture issue). I was fortunate enough that my previous set's mids and tweeters were all in fabulous shape, so I swapped every single one of them and now this set looks good as new.
So that's my story. I'm not sure what I'll do with the bum pair, maybe someone will want to part it out for crossovers or something. There's still at least one good woofer, three good mids and one tweeter. As far as where I should go from here to complete the restoration, I honestly am not savvy with speaker repair and could rely on someone with more knowledge, especially with these MCS speakers. I don't know what's in need of restoration and what I can probably just leave be.
More photos in the spoiler
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