Hello all! Hoping to get some help from the community.
Just picked up some Cerwin Vega D5s very cheap. Couldn't resist the 12 inch woofers. Foam surrounds are shot, and speakers are dirty, looks like they spent some time sucking up water on the bottom few inches. But cabinets still look pretty good. I hooked them up, one speaker sounds great, the other sounds kind of muddled in the midrange. Still pretty good, but not as good as the other one. Also, water got into the insulation, it smells a bit musty.
I am going to try to fix these up. They could be great for my son at college.
Ordered some new foam surrounds. While I am waiting for those, I am cleaning up the cabinet and trying to figure out what to do about the insulation. I am trying some household remedies (vinegar, baking soda), and I'm letting that take its course. But I'm thinking I might need to replace that insulation. It looks like it's the padding from under a carpet, not the foamier insulation. I tried a couple searches but I'm not finding this stuff. What is this called, and where can I find it?
I'd like to try my hand at recapping these. I've read a couple of threads here, I don't anticipate any problems... just can't get the crossover apart from the backplate (the piece exposed on the back of the speaker with the tweeter potentiometer on it). I pulled out the backplate assembly, but I am stuck trying to get to the capacitors. It looks like some of the components are glued to the back plate under the soldered PCB. Do I need to desolder everything on the PCB to remove the PCB to get to the caps? Or cut the glue off the backplate and desolder the speaker connections?
Please help here... I've attached some pictures.
If anyone has done this and has the list of capacitors handy, please share as well.
Once I put them back together, I will see if that muddled sound goes away; I will swap parts between the two speakers to isolate the component.
I've read elsewhere about adding bracing to these... is that necessary for the D5, and if so, where would you brace?
Thanks all for sharing your expertise. I really want to crank these up to 11!
Just picked up some Cerwin Vega D5s very cheap. Couldn't resist the 12 inch woofers. Foam surrounds are shot, and speakers are dirty, looks like they spent some time sucking up water on the bottom few inches. But cabinets still look pretty good. I hooked them up, one speaker sounds great, the other sounds kind of muddled in the midrange. Still pretty good, but not as good as the other one. Also, water got into the insulation, it smells a bit musty.
I am going to try to fix these up. They could be great for my son at college.
Ordered some new foam surrounds. While I am waiting for those, I am cleaning up the cabinet and trying to figure out what to do about the insulation. I am trying some household remedies (vinegar, baking soda), and I'm letting that take its course. But I'm thinking I might need to replace that insulation. It looks like it's the padding from under a carpet, not the foamier insulation. I tried a couple searches but I'm not finding this stuff. What is this called, and where can I find it?
I'd like to try my hand at recapping these. I've read a couple of threads here, I don't anticipate any problems... just can't get the crossover apart from the backplate (the piece exposed on the back of the speaker with the tweeter potentiometer on it). I pulled out the backplate assembly, but I am stuck trying to get to the capacitors. It looks like some of the components are glued to the back plate under the soldered PCB. Do I need to desolder everything on the PCB to remove the PCB to get to the caps? Or cut the glue off the backplate and desolder the speaker connections?
Please help here... I've attached some pictures.
If anyone has done this and has the list of capacitors handy, please share as well.
Once I put them back together, I will see if that muddled sound goes away; I will swap parts between the two speakers to isolate the component.
I've read elsewhere about adding bracing to these... is that necessary for the D5, and if so, where would you brace?
Thanks all for sharing your expertise. I really want to crank these up to 11!
