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Help me restore these PhaseTech PC60s

R

racer2086

Member
Scored a pair of these off an auction site.

I'm always interested in speakers that have a real wood finish. That's what initially caught my eye. Second, I'm always intrigued by names that I haven't heard of before.

After reading a little about these, I decided to bite, despite them needing a refoam and not knowing anything else about the driver condition.

Anyway, they are constructed quite well and the cabs are solid. They appear to have a natural oak veneer with solid wood rounded corners.

All drivers work, but the woofers definitely need a refoam. Not as easy as the average speaker because of the driver design and the fact that the foam extends under the foam on the driver face. PhaseTech will sell me new drivers, though, which I will probably invest in despite the tight funds considering the regard of these speakers.

My greatest desire while I wait for the woofers is to get the cabinets back looking good. One has some light mold on it and the other has water spots you can see in the photos. This didn't show as apparent in the auction pictures.

So what would you guys use to take care of the mold? And what do I do to regain an even, smooth appearance to the wood finish? I want to regain the rich look to the real wood veneer if possible.

Thanks for the help.

(Sorry for the garbage cell pics)
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Nice speakers.
Refoam the woofers.
Order flat edge surrounds with an inner diameter measurement that will overlap the "cone" 1/4" to 3/8".
Clean up the "cone" edge and glue up the surrounds.
Easy peezy and will sound wonderful.
Picture 1766.jpg
 
Everything above, use some wood cleaning solution like Murphys on the cabs (which look amazing when done), and I would replace the electrolytic caps with new electrolytics, the films should be fine. The crossovers are pretty complicated, and these speakers sound amazing.
 
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Nice! Do you have specs on the foam or a source where you got it?

Will try the Murphy's. Just looked up the stuff...has great reviews. I think that'll do what I need to clean them. Will that get rid of the spots or areas of the finish that have lightened? Or do I have to re-oil/stain it or something?

Also, there is a clear outline of the plastic structure of the grill on the front baffle wood. Where the plastic covered it, the wood has a good color to it. Where the fabric was, it is more washed out looking and feels rougher (you can kinda see it in the 3rd picture). These must have been somewhere very humid. Will the Murphy's bring the color back to that?

Thanks. Can't wait to get these going and looking great
 
Correct foams can be hard to find. Measure and compare, repeat. Tone method for voice coil centering is needed. Try to draw a circle a set distance from edge of piston to aid with gluing foam.

Locate a PC50 and you would be set!
 
Another option is to send the woofers to Phase Tech for full refurbishing. They're still around and offer excellent service.
 
4 of the 9 caps on the crossover are electrolytic.... Just picked up a pair at a garage sale myself. They had not been played in a long time. Th surrounds did not look damaged, but a couple of hours of listening, and they cracked. They sounded very very very sweet on my Pioneer SX 650 in a small room. Down the road will be looking to re-foam myself or send them in for service.

Good luck!
 
racer2086 said:
Nice! Do you have specs on the foam or a source where you got it?

Will try the Murphy's. Just looked up the stuff...has great reviews. I think that'll do what I need to clean them. Will that get rid of the spots or areas of the finish that have lightened? Or do I have to re-oil/stain it or something?

Also, there is a clear outline of the plastic structure of the grill on the front baffle wood. Where the plastic covered it, the wood has a good color to it. Where the fabric was, it is more washed out looking and feels rougher (you can kinda see it in the 3rd picture). These must have been somewhere very humid. Will the Murphy's bring the color back to that?

Thanks. Can't wait to get these going and looking great
Click to expand...
Not sure honestly. It may help, it may make it worse. Bhunter is right too, it may be quite a bit of work, but the veneer is good enough that you could sand and stain again. As far as the foams, I just hunted on eBay with the measurements and found the best match and made it work (like Drumbum said). Sending them in to Phase Tech will be easy, but they aren't cheap. Very nice to work with however, one of my tweeters had died and I bought a replacement and got a free tshirt!
Also highly recommend getting rid of the brown cloth and doing black. They look 100 times better IMO, and it's not hard to do since the frames are plastic.
 
Thanks for all the advice!

Rick didn't have the right foam and a quick google search didn't net anything, so I decided to spring for new woofers from PhaseTech. It is cheaper to just buy a new one than to have them repair your old ones...

After some reading of some restoration threads, I decided on a course of action. My goal was not to alter the original color, so I didn't want to use the Howard's Restore-a-finish, because that's basically a stain. I ended up spending $20 at Home Depot for all this stuff: Murphy's Oil Soap (for cleaning everything real good first), Watco Rejuvinating Oil (to re-oil the wood back to an even finish), #0000 steel wool (for applying the Watco oil), and Howard's Feed-n-Wax (to wax, seal, and polish the wood after the oil has had 72 hours to dry).

Here are some pictures of my progress.

This is a before shot of the side with the water spots. Murphy's didn't seem to do much. As soon as it dried the spots were still there. Rubbing the surface with it did transfer a lot of something to my towel, whether it was stain, wax, grime or what I don't know.

Before:
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Right after rubbing the oil on with the #0000 steel wool (let it sit 10 minutes them wipe excess off):
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After wiping the excess, here we are after 36 hours of drying. No Feed-n-wax yet, as Watco says to wait 72 hours before waxing. The left speaker is obviously the one I did. One picture is no flash, the other with flash (all cell pics).

Side no flash:
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Side Flash:
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Top no flash:
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Top flash:
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Front no flash (you can see the outline from the inner part of the grill on the right speaker):
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Front flash:
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So far very pleased! And it wasn't much work at all! I bet it'll look even better once the Howard's wax is on there. I'll post some pictures once I get the new woofers in.

I really can't wait to listen to these. I saw some paperwork online from PhaseTech that said these go down to 40Hz. Is that true? That would be even better than my DA PS-10s with a 10" woofer. Seems impossible.
 
I had a new pair about twenty years ago, with matching subwoofer. Very impressive-sounding speaker. Nice to see a pair being resurrected, and I think you'll find them well worth the effort. Phase Tech was a brand familiar to enthusiasts, and especially that particular model, so good purchase!
 
Another AudioKarma member sugggested these surrounds, so i purchased a set.:

inside diameter 4 3/8 inches, angled

inner roll diameter (cone dia.) 4 3/4 inches

outer roll diameter 5 5/8 inches

outside diameter 6 3/16 inches


After very careful preparations, I have glued them to the cone, it appears they will work just fine. My dampening material was not in bad shape or else I probably would have opted for new drivers. I trimmed the outer edge of the dampening material by carefully removed the old material as well as the old surround and glue beneath the edge/outside diameter on top of the styrofoam. The new surround lays flat on the styrofoam snugged up against and below the top of the dampening material.

I figured if I failed at replacing these surrounds I could just order new drivers. I would like to support Phase Tech an American Company that happily supports their historical vintage products. Maybe in the future.

It is tedious and time consuming to be successful at replacing these surrounds You need to have few attempts with other speakers under your belt, patience and some luck...

Going to school on the OP's project.
 
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I ordered new drivers. Will be here Saturday. It took them 1 day turn around from placing my order to get them both made and shipped via Fedex. This company keeps impressing me. I can't believe they support their old products like this, let alone have such great customer service.

I may take a crack at refoaming the original woofers, since they'll just be sitting around as a paper weight. I'm surprised those surrounds you linked fit. I measured the cone size to be about 4 3/8" and estimated the inside diameter to be 3 7/8", leaving 1/4" overlap for each side. Did I measure wrong? The ebay surrounds say they have an inside diameter of 4 3/8" which would leave no overlap with the cone?

Unfortunately, I have to go out of town for about a week so I won't get to wax them and drop in the new woofers until next Thursday :( At least I'll have something to look forward to :)
 
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Here the surrounds mentioned above are glued to the styrofoam cone. You can see where I trimmed the outside edge of the dampening material all the way down to the cone to make room for the inner edge of the surround.

I also sparayed some 3m adhesive onto the dampening material to hopefully slow down degradation. It may work, it may not work over time. Just have to wait and see. These speakers are specifically designed to use with the grills on, so i really do not care how it looks as long as it sounds right. If it doesnt, i will peel it off.
 
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Oh wow I must have measured wrong because those look great. I bet they'll sound great also.

I'll have to pick a pair of those surrounds up. That ebay person had them in rubber also. Think that would affect the speaker action? I'd rather do it in rubber for the longevity.
 
racer2086 said:
Oh wow I must have measured wrong because those look great. I bet they'll sound great also.

I'll have to pick a pair of those surrounds up. That ebay person had them in rubber also. Think that would affect the speaker action? I'd rather do it in rubber for the longevity.
Click to expand...

I centered them with a 50 hz test tone, they are ready to install in the cabinets and fire up. I will update this post after i get a chance to listen to them later this evening.

And you will have yours fired up tomorrow. Looking forward to your thoughts about how they sound.
 
Well they sound very good. but not as good as they did befre the original foams bit the dust. Maybe these surrounds will break in. I will probably end up ordering replacement woofers. Gonna try removing adhesive from dampening material, and allow for a break in period for the surrounds. Still images like a charm, time alignment is evident and clarity is super fine. I have been listening to Melloncamps "Life Goes On" since it came out. Tonight was the first time i realized he said "long after the thrill of living is gone", for the past 3 decades I have been hearing "long after the threat of living is gone". So they sound very nice just missing the original sparkle for lack of a better term.

Furthermore they did not pass the Bon Jovi test. You see I dislike th whole Bon Jovi sound. A good speaker allows me to go ahead and listen to a Bon Jovi song all the way through without quickly finding something else to listen to instead.

Update: I had put the original trim back in place over the woofer mounting screw heads. After I removed the woofers from the cabinet post test referenced above. I noticed that the roll on these new surrounds was flush aginst the old trim. In others words there is still hope, but I already have my JBL L40 t3's in the rig for my listening pleasure so a retest will be at a date. In the meantime I am just going to get off this thread for awhile, listen to the OP's new woofer impressions.
 
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I won't be back to be able to install and first listen until Thursday :(

So I will probably post back easter weekend when I visit my dad about how they sound once I get a good chance to turn them up.

Great to hear your impressions, Billy Oxygen
 
Just as an aside...a couple years back I found a really nice pair of Fried A/2's on the floor at the Goodwill. 15 bucks for the pair. They needed new surrounds which I put on, but the tweeter on one was dead. It took quite a while to find a replacement...I finally found one on eBay searching by the number stamped on the tweeter rather than by a "Fried tweeter" search. It's the Phase Tech PC-60 tweeter.

OK...wrong. I just did a search for my old thread here on the Fried A/2's. The tweeters were from the Phase Tech R-70 speakers not the R-60. Tweeters manufactured MSE Audio, designed by Bill Hecht, the guy who invented the soft dome tweeter back in the day.
 
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