This will be fun to watch!
Excited about new speaker restoration project (JBL 4435's)
- Thread starter RS Steve
- Start date
Zonker92
All shiny and chrome
That switch looks completely oxidized to me. The blades should be shiny copper, not black. (I just dragged out my discards to confirm, and sure enough, with a razor blade I was able to scrape off the black oxidation to expose shiny copper.)
Also, you can't even see or access it, but there is another set of blades sandwiched tightly between the switch and the printed circuit board: The only way to clean them properly would be to desolder the switch, clean them, solder the switch back in (then wait a few months before you would have to do it again).
As Greg Timbers also noted, these switches are inherently defective, drastically restrict current flow to the mid-bass woofers, and richly deserve to be bypassed. Since you have some time, send them over here and I'll do 'em!
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That switch is basically useless for me anyway, if it was for true biamping maybe, but I will most likely remove it as you did.
Looks great! Is that finished, or a test fit? Very nice glue work if finished!Ughhhh! off with the old foam and on with the new, 4 times the fun!
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That's a test fit, I got all 4 to this point and will finish either tonight or this weekend. The surrounds were still strong enough that they didn't crumble, that made it much easier to remove them. There was no sign that these were ever refoamed before which is hard to believe, I wonder if the woofers were replaced at some point. I seriously doubt the original surrounds would still be intact today. Other than the surrounds giving up, these woofers look new.
Then you would think, but really don't know, that they don't have the mass rings. Maybe you should run the something like "Woofer Tester" to see what you are dealing with. I would think that the tuning between the two different woofers would be a bit different.
Actually, it could be "interesting" to have the 2235 as the "lower" woofer with the 2234 covering the upper portion of the range.
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Zonker92
All shiny and chrome
Agree, although you gotta figure the folks at JBL considered and rejected that approach.
One question I had to answer in restoring mine, was whether the low/mid woofer went under the horn, or on the other side of the baffle. But the length and placement of the respective crossover>driver wires confirmed that it goes under the horn, as I would have expected.
Online, had to order 12 of them though, 12.00 cost. Now I just have to cut them to length.
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From what the seller told me, they were built into a wall at a sound studio. The owners of the sound studio had replaced them and wanted to get as much money out of them as possible, keeping in mind that shipping them was not an option they wanted to do. The person I got them from decided to purchase everything and put them back together being local to the sound studio. He never got around to restoring them and decided to part them also, I lucked out by having a way to get them here via a friend that was making a trip down. I am very pleased that all the drivers and horns are like new condition with no signs of scuffs or dings. I assume they were placed where they had no chance of anyone coming in contact with the drivers. The cabinets and missing parts are the only issues they have, they had sound deadening foam glued to the baffles, and never had the grills installed. The damage to the cabinets is not that bad. I have acquired most everything except screws that were missing. I have found a place that sells the correct fasteners and will verify what I need after getting with Zonker to make sure of their sizes.I thought I recognized the pic. Thanks for re-pointing out your thread. That is one heck of a project, almost on par with the Westminster build. Love it that you saved these. I wonder why the original owner let them get this way and was going to part them out. Something you might wish to consider; after researching the speakers I came onto a nice post on the used for a pair of big JBL. The seller offers a very cool custom stand/base for them.
http://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649336145-jbl-4350-audio-system/
Thanks, I really liked the 4430's I have owned in the past, so getting these back to their glory is pretty special for me. Time will tell if they are good enough to push my 250ti's out of the room, I absolutely love the 250ti sound.
I spent some time over the weekend scraping the old glue off the baffles that was used to attach the sound deadening foam, the glue etched into the paint and all that's needed now is some sanding and paint on the baffles. I will need to use a primer / sealer first, there is a good chance the areas where glue was placed will flash when painted with the low gloss black. The woofers turned out very nice after the re foam, the test run on my DATS system shows all 4 woofers spec out very close. If these woofers were ever re foamed in the past, they also had to be re coned, there was NO sign what so ever of previous replacement. Being a sound studio, they might of just replaced the complete set of woofers when the surrounds failed, I can't imagine the original surrounds would be anything other than powder by now. The surrounds I removed were starting to fail, but still complete with just a few splits, these speakers have to be over 30 years old
. The bi radial horns are in very good condition, no repairs to their finish is needed. 
I think you mean 4435's, the 4430's were the single woofer type which I owned previously. They didn't have the sound I preferred compared to the 250ti's.
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