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ADS Metal Grille Pegs

Drugolf

Drugolf

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
As the owner of L 1590's I have the infamous metal grilles with the oddball unobtainium pegs. My grilles have 4 of the 6 pegs each and I need to remedy that.

I think some of you may have come up with some good ideas on how to fab something similar to those pegs or that would replace the originals. Let's hear it.
 
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ADS did NOT think of restoration when they designed a lot of their grills. How would one fabricate a grille from scratch? I would imagine that it would be worthwhile to build a jig for a few thousand units and stamp one out in 30 seconds, but one handmade set would be difficult. The L-12/15/20-30 grills would've been the subject of a Rube Goldberg cartoon had he published in the 70's.

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Drugolf said:
As the owner of L 1590's I have the infamous metal grilles with the oddball unobtainium pegs. My grilles have 4 of the 6 pegs each and I need to remedy that.

I think some of you may have come up with some good ideas on how to fab something similar to those pegs or that would replace the originals. Let's hear it.
Click to expand...
Amazing. I procured an ads mv-10c center channel speaker with a metal grill problem. This speaker has the rubber inserts on the speaker, only much smaller diameter than yours and the pegs on the metal grill are plastic. Well when it arrived via shipping, three of the four pegs were broken off inside the rubber inserts on the cabinet. So my thought was to get the tweezers and try to pull them out and super glue the pegs onto the plastic housings on the grill. But they are small and the housings themselves were coming away from the grill. (BAD DESIGN) as far as i'm concerned. So there is also the clearance problem with this as with yours. So a friend suggested epoxying small bolts over the inserts on the cabinet and repeating the process with magnets on the metal grill, allowing clearance in this case for not only the two tweeters but also for the two 6.5 mid-woofer surrounds to clear. And honestly I think that's probably my best fix with this speaker that I believe was produced in the mid ninetys. So on a much smaller scale, i'm feeling your situation to be sure. He suggested this month's ago and I have been somewhat apprehensive to do it. But in my case I think it's the best solution. So i'm going to give it a shot, being that my fix is hugely easier than yours. But good luck with that my friend. WILL.
 
[ATT
ACH=full]834751[/ATTACH] broken grill pegs here also. Dag nab it.
 

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The only speaker I use without the grilles are my 1590s. There is too much air being moved by the woofers to get through the grille and all the extra comes out the gaps, top, sides and bottom. After feeling the amount of air exiting the top of the speaker gap between the grille and speaker, I removed the grilles. Just seems better that way.

Many folks like to remove grilles for more high frequency sound, cause old ears don't hear the highs as well and anything helps. I believe most manufacturers back then made speaker sound right with the grilles in place. Since the grille also keeps curious fingers and folks intent on damaging the drivers, I have always used grilles, not that there are those here that would poke a dust cap or tweeter.
 
Agreed blue. I pretty much leave mine off. I like to see the drivers anyway. All the more reason to have these fixed so it is easy to remove and replace when appropriate. I roll speakers so I want to of course have teh grilles on when they are put aside. Plus, this weekend we set up the xmas tree which goes in my lounge and the activity of decorating and seeing all the needles..... I can get the grilles on, but they just aren't properly or fully connected.

I think I did read on one of the ADS threads someone having a good idea of some sort of rubber they used in the receiver holes. The computer board stand-offs make sense other than no little pointy thing on the end.
 
Was thinking screw anchor inserts in cabinets with soft rubber or vinyl spacers snd long screws. But you want easy removal.
Of course the obvious, which sure you have cosidered. Find hobbiyist with benchtop lathe, willing to duplicate what you need. Or, a lathe hobbiest who make fancy pens from wood or plastic. About any durometer rubber or vinyl material that small size dhould be available from plastics suppliers. At least in manufacturing towns.
A longshot. Automotive plastic door panel hardware. The type with the male feather shape. Could the female pieces work with the barb pieces you have? Could female piece be modified to fit cabinet?
I may be missing what you want. Difficult to visuallize from words and couple pics.
 
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Yep, read thru the threads. Just looking for as many ideas as all of you might have or success stories before I jump into doing something.
Would like a solution that is as close to original as possible. Especially if it is a solution that a bunch of others (and there are) that are struggling with the same issue can also use.
Old Guy8, good ideas there on the lathe hobbyists.
 
The metal parts are the parts that are most often lost, and can be reproduced on a lathe easiest out of round stock, flat sided to ease tightening and threaded to receive the original bolt. The rubber receiver parts are going to be another story and they will go bad eventually if they haven't given away yet. I would like to see a magnetic solution that can be retrofitted for all to use. Getting the rubber parts out of the hole will be the most difficult DIY task.
 
If I had to make some for my speakers, I would buy some ultra low profile socket screws with the appropriate threads to thread into a properly sized female to female standoff and then get a few bolts to thread into the other end. Chuck the bolt into an electric drill and put the point and catch lip on the bolt with a file. Then thread that shaped bolt into the standoff with some loctite. Smooth out the speakers where the pin dented it and install the pin (standoff with shaped bolt) with the ultra low profile socket head screws and rest after a job well done.
 
Living in a city that had a tool and die manufacturing history. Many machinists had lathes and Bridgeport's in their garage. Maybe ask at any local machine shops for contacts of retired machinists, tool and diemakers. Going in front door of tooling shop, at maybe $100/hour to make some prototypes for trial, not viable. Getting the durometer, hardness, of the rubber right for the right grip. Could compare to known items. Hydraulic o'rings are generally 70 to 90 durometer.
 
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Well the good thing is I have the originals as a prototype for someone to use as a reference.
BS I think I can picture what you are saying.
 
Aptone said:
It looks like these are basically what is needed, if the threaded section was made into a pointy bayonet>
View attachment 835227
https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Sp...qid=1481690034&sr=8-1&keywords=Metal+Standoff

A clever person could probably turn the threaded section down to the correct shape. A determined person could probably hand file it if there was no lathe available.
Click to expand...

Maybe even a Dremel with a grinding bit of some sort.
I think I have a potential solution for the rubber too and it may actually work well with the threads which would also do well at holding it in by gripping the rubber.
 
With a Dremel tool, one could grind the threads off down to the barrel, leaving the first few threads to grip the rubber insert that's goes into the cabinet.

This assumes the rubber inserts are available.

The bolt that screws into the standoff that holds the grill in place would need to be sourced as well.

I like my original solution better though. :D
 
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