leak woofer blues.....

imready

imready

it's good to be the king!
well, my garage sale leak 3090's got drug in the house yesterday. i was excited to find out what my $10 had bought and quickly set up a test system to try them out. much to my dismay, speaker on had one driver functioning while speaker two had two. i expected to make repairs but .....yikes! i removed both woofers and both test open. one woofer had seperated from the surround and now the face of the cone is not parellal to the frame. if these wern't so rare i would dig into them myself but i can't easily locate replacements so i'm thinking i better get a pro. would you guys dig into this yourself or not? who would rebuild your woofers? i'm going to have to rebuild the x-overs too and need a good source for quality caps, i'm not gonna find them here in casper,wy. i have no paperwork either! here i go again on another audio adventure!
 
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A classic problem of the leak woofer. I think as long as the woofer sag hasn't actually deformed the voice coil, you could probably separate the voicecoil from the woofer and then reset it. But the spider on the woofers I've seen is all in one plane -- not like most where there is a collar that raises the spider above the frame -- and I'm not certain how to tackle it. If you want to practice before you actually try, I'll send you mine if you pay the shipping -- which might be not cheap, since they are heavy castings. I think you will find that under the dustcap there is a heavy piece of bitumenous pad which blocks access to the voice coil, and maybe the culprit causing the sag. I couldn't figure out how to reset or replace the 13 inch cloth surrounds, much less the spider, without changing the TS parameters sort of randomly. So I gave up. The cabinets on the second pair were shot anyway.
 
Not meaning to offend, but I suspect that very few speaker repair guys have any experience with Leak woofers, which are peculiar, to say the least. So while they may know their way around the average driver, they may be as much a first timer with a mass loaded styrofoam/aluminium foil composite cone with a doped tacky cambric reverse roll surround as the poster. There must be some repair people who do have experience with Leaks -- it sounds like Array does -- and one of them would be worth using. But I would not assume that every repair guy is going to be competant, just as I would not assume every car mechanic is equally qualified to work on Alfas or whatever.
 
how did you know i had an alfa Nat? 67 duetto spider to be exact. thank you nat for the generous offer on sending me your speaker to practice on, i'm certainly going to consider it over the next few days while i try and make a decision. i've got into a few voice coils but they were on tweeters and that surely made me gun shy of messing with voice coils. i've got cataracs in the middle of both my eyes and it makes it difficult working on small stuff. it appears the dust cap was either lifting on one of these woofers or someone already investigated these as it has silicon holding it down. i suspect lifting but i don't know for sure. the woofers on the 3090's have a rubber surround , a little easier to deal with than your woofers cloth. i have not testes all the drivers yest as i have been under the weather the last couple of days but hopefully today i will see if they function. i guessing they are ok and the crossover is other main issue. they have elcaps and from another source i was told that these often fail. i haven't put a meter to anything but the woofers yet. need a good cap source!
 
pulled the crossovers this morning, two blown apart caps, a few leaking caps upon visual inspection. glad to see caps are well marked! i've also received a suggested replacement caps list from wilmslow audio thru the owner of the pair for sale on ebay. these speakers will live againwith your help! thanks to all who contribute information and suggestions! john
 
Those speakers are total keepers! You got them basically for free, so for the cost of new VCs, you get to have a set of killer, monster speakers that should last you just about forever. Like Array said, seek out a competent speaker repair shop, and get those woofers done right! I'd just love to have a pair of those. :thmbsp: Would like to hear what you think of them when they are done.
 
i guess the hard part is finding the right person restore the woofers and prying my fingers loose of cash to do the job. if anyone has experience with rebuilding these or knows someone who might, i'd be interested to talk to them. i haven't ruled out doing it myself but with these being so rare , well , not something a guy should be learning the ropes on. also, the places that make custom coils only want to deal with a business, not an individual.guess i need to be patient on these, not one of the things i do best. any help or advice is greatly appreciated. is ther much of a possibility that the lead wires are broken and the coils themselves are fine? wishful thinking on my part........
 
I hope you get a chance to get them fixed up. Mine are semi-operational (need pots replaced) but what I was hearing from them even in current condition is promising.

RC
 
Would the woofers from other Leak speakers fit in these cabs? Are the woofers the same as the drivers that came in other Leak models, 2060, etc.? Find out the answer to that, and you could save yourself some cash, as other Leak models sell for considerably less than the ones you have. You could part out another Leak speaker for not very much money, but the woofers would have to be the same! Post a few pics of the woofers (backside, etc.), and maybe someone here can figure this out.
 
i know the woofers are at least somewhat different in the 2060, nat posted earlier that his had cloth surrounds while mine are rubber but that doesn't mean other parts wouldn't be interchangeable.i tested the other drivers just now and have one upper mid range with the coil showing open and one tweeter showing open. i guessing when the crossovers went they took some voice coils with them. since they don't show shorted, i am guessing that the wire melts at a weak point or soldier joint instead of melting into a lump? just a guess. i will be looking at all options to get these up and running again, but i am somewhat discouraged. the crossovers have been worked on before i got my hands on them, instead of completely rebuilding them , they took the cheap way out and replaced two caps and left the other junk in there. if these really sound that good they will be worth the time and effort. however , if they are that rare and desireable the thought does cross my mind to sell them for big bucks and buy myself something functional.
 
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