Anybody used replacement Boston A60 aftermarket woofers?

so_ein_pech

Well-Known Member
I picked up some Boston Acoustics A60s (series) for a reasonable prices of free. I was hoping they would just need a refoam but it turns out they just got one. The problem is one of the woofer voice-coils is burned out.

There are drop-in "clone" replacement woofers that are readily available which are marketed specifically for A60s, A70s and T830. Apparently these all use the same woofers.

Does anyone have any experience with these? How identical are they to the original?

I am trying to decide if I should buy one or wait for an original to pop up on ebay. I feel like if I go aftermarket, I should replace both, but at that point, I'm probably spending more on the speakers than they are worth.
 
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...I am trying to decide if I should buy one or wait for an original to pop up on ebay. I feel like if I go aftermarket, I should replace both, but at that point, I'm probably spending more on the speakers than they are worth.
Just curious, what series are yours? The Series I woofer is a little different than the later ones, if you didn't know.
 
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The speakers do not have too much resale value. Not saying they are not good speakers, but not much value in the resale market.
 
The speakers do not have too much resale value. Not saying they are not good speakers, but not much value in the resale market.
A lot of folks don't give a ratts a$$ about resale value, the music is what really counts with them. :smoke:
 
Sounds like he might care a bit about the worth...

So he might, others won't.

Sometimes its just about the satisfaction of fixing something that was broken even if it means taking a little bit of a loss. Obviously its nice to at least break even. For the enjoyment that you get out of things I a lot of vintage audio things that aren't super rare are criminally undervalued. And then of course the ones that are highly desirable are absurdly overpriced. But that's just the way the market works.
 
I'm still interested to know if the performance of the clones stacks up but in a strange twist I don't need that information anymore.

Obviously the first thing I did when I got these was to test them with a multimeter to find the broken woofer. Never hook up unknown speakers to an amplifier unless you are the kind of person that likes Russian roulette. One of the woofers measured ~5 ohms and the other measured about 0.5 ohms. This is suspicious since I was expecting a blown woofer coil to measure open. I figured that when the coil failed it went short. At this point I was relived that didn't hook a short circuit up to my amp.

The next thing was to test for any woofer excursion with a AA battery and some wire. This is where things got weird. As soon as I hooked up the battery to the terminals the woofer emitted a whining noise for maybe 10 seconds. Then it started acting normal (battery hooked up one direction caused the woofer to push out, with the polarity reversed it pulled in). Interesting...

Then I tested the impedance. It measured about 5 ohms. Even more interesting. I hooked everything up to a little T-amp and crossed my fingers. They both work perfectly.

:wtf:

I have them hooked up to my TV system now, replacing a set of Phase Tech PC2 speakers which weigh about twice as much and sound about twice as dull. I know the Bostons may not be the most accurate or refined speaker, but I'll be damned if they aren't fun to listen to.
 
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