Lafayette Criterion 2002A - Refurb / Setup Improvement

[jmarbury]

I got a pair of Criterion 2002As that have been 'fine' for a while now. But the surround on both of the woofers is old and cracking/torn in places, the tweeter and horns are cutting out/scratching when the brilliance & presence knobs are turned. Which when I opened it up the connections for those are all bent out of shape and barely hanging together.


So at a minimum I feel like I'd want to replace the woofers/surrounds on the woofers and redo the connectors for the tweeter and horns. Would this be sinking money into subpar speakers? I'm a little torn on whether the repair will end up just costing as much as much better speakers so any thoughts?


Really the only use they get is for listening to vinyl with a Denon DP-23F turntable and a Technics SA-GX130 receiver. Probably going to upgrade the receiver at some point as well if there are thoughts on the setup and where it's most worthwhile to upgrade first.

 

[Jadam318]

I’m not super familiar with that speaker, but I’m a big fan of saving gear that can be saved. If the crossovers don’t have crazy big capacitors and you can solder, fixing them up might not cost all that much. New woofer foams are what, $30 or so for a pair? Say you spend another $20-30 in electronic parts. I vote to save them, especially if you like them.

I did that exact thing to a pair of Panasonic speakers that showed up in a lot of gear I bought together. I thought they would be trash, but after fixing them up I actually like them a lot.

 

[stickman]

A couple of years ago someone in my neighborhood set a beat up pair of Lafayette 2002+s (very similar) on the curb and I was able to make one good functioning speaker with the useable parts. Both woofers were good but had foam surrounds that were getting "sticky" and deteriorating, so I painted one surround with Elmer's acid free rubber cement (it's still intact and holding together) and had the other one refoamed for use in an orphan curbside BIC Venturi Formula 6 speaker as the woofers are good performing drivers.

The cheesy little potentiometers used for the mid (horn) and tweeter (cones) level controls are junk and even after spraying them with de-oxit they still don't function very well. I seem to recall the cross-over caps (attached to the back of the level control plate) were two 8uf non-polarized electrolytics that I should have changed but haven't gotten around to yet. The mid horn is super efficient while the two 16 ohm cone tweeters wired in parallel are not near as efficient and barely match the woofer output level.

Overall the sound of the speaker was far better than I had expected and it has made a fine orphan garage speaker. The mid-horn is somewhat honky/peaky and needs to be kept at the lowest possible level that still sounds "right". If I were to replace the caps with good poly caps (like Daytons for this low dollar application) and clean up the pots better, I'm sure the sound would be much improved.

I would recommend refurbing your 2002A's with new woofer surrounds and capacitors (and cleaning the pots with de-oxit) while trying to keep the costs to a minimum to make sure your investment is justified by the resulting sound quality. They are indeed worth repairing.

 

[C Hart]

The 2002 was a reasonably good midpriced speaker back in the 70s. The A was a cosmetically updated version of the +, which was a slightly updated version of the 2002. I didn't really like them because of the horn midrange but they were fairly accurate and quite efficient. The 10" version (2001A) was well reviewed by Consumer reports. Whether you like them or not will be up to your preference. You can Google "Lafayette catalog 1979" to see the specs in the World Radio History archives.