bose 901 mods?!

[Karma16]

The closest Bose will come to doing this is to have you trade in your speakers for new ones.
They don't even sell complete drivers.

If this indeed the case, then probably your next best bet is having a professional speaker rebuilder recone your speakers. When I had my repair shop I used a pro reconner who worked out of Albuquerque. He never let me down. The rebuilt speakers looked almost new. He would try to match surrounds. For example, he would use a generic foam surround to match the opposite side speakers foam surround. All in all, I was satisfied with his work. You can expect to pay around $30 per speaker. Maybe you could work out a out a discount seeing as how you probably have 18 speakers to fix!!!!!
(you really should, you know)

 

[cheon57]

Interesting... I've never seen cloth kits. I've refoamed a pair of 301s using the foam kits. That worked out very well. I ended up giving them to my boss to use as fronts for his surround sound system.

Specifically what sort of mods are you talking about?

Were the 301's fairly easy to work on? I really like both my pairs of 301's and plan on driving them with my QS500 and processing with a Technics 8020. I would like to see how the rework of the 901's goes as I think my Series VI's could use it and even if I decide to sell them I would want them to be in top working order.
If I had a set of Series II's and they took them and sent me back a pair of Series VI's I would have been pissed :nono: . I might have had to drive there and do a Discount Tire Granny with them. Had I known they weren't going t perform :scratch2: (imho) like the earlier series, I wouldn't have given the $100 for them that I did, stands included. I bought them, the 301 Series III's for $100 a pair for each pair and for an extra $30 she threw in a pair of RTR Series IV-C's that had been sitting there for 3 months. Until I got them home and looked them up,,I had never heard of them.

 

[David_NC]

I'm in the same situation with the surrounds on my 901-IV's. I'll probably replace the surrounds myself. At $30 x 18, I'll easily pay more for the repair than I did for the speakers 12 years ago. I hae a friend that had two pairs of Series IV's that had deterioated foam. He did the $350 exchange deal and was very pleased with it.

FWIW, you CAN use a graphinc equalizer instead of the Bose eq. This same friend loaned me one of the pairs years ago. He wanted to keep the Bose eq (he only had one) but had an old Soundcraftsmen graphic equalizer that he gave me to use. I plugged in both the qraphic eq and the Bose eq, bypassed the graphic, and adjusted the sound with the Bose eq. Then, I switched out the Bose and in the graphic eq and adjusted by switching back and forth 'til I got them to sound similar. It might not have been exact, but with the variations of the room (curtains open or closed), number of people in the room (bodies absorb lots of sound), etc, and the recording to recording variations, little of this is exact anyway.

As to using the 901's with HT, I used mine with a Sherwood receiver of some model (6050, I believe) that had main-in / pre-out loops. I used them for the front speakers. If I'd wanted to use them for the rear, I'd have just added an additional amp, as this receiver had outputs for all the channels. This was 11 years ago, but I still use the same receiver (without the 901's) for my HT.

Like many things, if one tries to use 901's for a purpose for which they are not intended, they probably won't sound decent. Use them properly (correctly set up room and eq installed), and they do sound good, but then some choose Mercedes over Lexus.

David

 

[tim in pa]

factory rebuild?

i know of the factory deal you speak of. send your 901's in and $$$$ ($900 i think now) and they'll send you replacemnt speakers all nice. not for me. i love doing this kind of thing, but i know you can screw it up, so do the learning up front. my initial thread was about these mods (info) being offered on ebay - one to assist in refoaming, and the second mod guaranteeing 901 improvemed sound. i'm still curious if anyone has experience to share with either of these. i am not asking for the info, i'll gladly pay for the info if it's favorable.

the cloth re-edgeing kit offered say's no shimming required, no dust cap removal. from all i've read here that worries me about obtaining perfect voice coil/magnet (concentric) alignment. feel should get you close, but i think shims closer. someone once mentioned injecting a 10 hz signal (where, and what amplitude) to assist in the "feel" process.

 

[gearhead]

I'm interested in the 901 sound improvement deal also, mostly out of curiousity.
After you pay him $12, is he going to say "Replace them with a pair of ________!! HA HA!!!"
Kinda like those "Send me $20 and I'll show you how to get rich!" games.

 

[guptonr]

I had great success replacing my own series IV surrounds using a kit from www.SpeakerRepair.com. They claim its the same as the factory foam. It was easy to do and produced great results. I actually did it without removing the speakers, using shims or removing the dust cover (per their instructions). Those drivers are relatively small so aligning the voice call wasn't much of an issue. They did include some extra surrounds so when a couple shifted before drying I could re do. I ran a 20Hz tone from a CD through them after I was done and found no rubbing.

I have an old Pioneer VSX 5900s I use for HT. It doesn't have 5.1, only pro-logic II but has seperate pre in/out for front and rear channels. One of those might work with your attempt to use 901s for multichannel HT.