Safe to ship drivers with no surrounds?

[Puddintane]

May be overthinking this a bit. But I’m about to move, and I have a set of JBL L56s that were awaiting new surrounds. They’re all cleaned off, so there are no surrounds in them at all. Is it safer to just mount them back in the cabinets during the move where they’ll be vertical but maybe bouncing around without surrounds? Or would it be best to just pack them up either individually or both together safely in a separate carton (packed flat)? I guess the question is, is it safe to ship them mounted in their usual vertical position without any surrounds? Can that damage them or the spider or anything? Thanks in advance.

 

[tgmartin]

I don't have any first-hand experience with this but if you don't have the time or parts to do the surround replacement and you anticipate rough treatment of these in shipment it would seem that it might be good to provide some gentle, symmetrical support with loosely wadded paper towels between the cones and baskets without putting undue "outward" pressure and possibly, if there are grilles that could take it, maybe a piece of corrugated cardboard on the inside of the grilles and some more loosely wadded paper towels between the cones and the sheet of cardboard. Again, there should be no undue pressure, just something to stabilize the cones and voice coil and help the spider support any jostling. Are YOU going to be handling these things personally or having others actually doing the transport?

 

[malden]

that's a very good question

in general, the more mass in a package, the more the likelihood that damage to something can occur

my instinct would be to remove the drivers, connect the two woofers together, face-to-face with some soft material such as polyfill between the cones to keep them from shifting too much

 

[Puddintane]

I don't have any first-hand experience with this but if you don't have the time or parts to do the surround replacement and you anticipate rough treatment of these in shipment it would seem that it might be good to provide some gentle, symmetrical support with loosely wadded paper towels between the cones and baskets without putting undue "outward" pressure and possibly, if there are grilles that could take it, maybe a piece of corrugated cardboard on the inside of the grilles and some more loosely wadded paper towels between the cones and the sheet of cardboard. Again, there should be no undue pressure, just something to stabilize the cones and voice coil and help the spider support any jostling. Are YOU going to be handling these things personally or having others actually doing the transport?

National moving company will be doing the job. Guess I could do the paper towels thing.

 

[Puddintane]

that's a very good question

in general, the more mass in a package, the more the likelihood that damage to something can occur

my instinct would be to remove the drivers, connect the two woofers together, face-to-face with some soft material such as polyfill between the cones to keep them from shifting too much

Also a sensible-sounding idea. I do have a box that’s pretty much the exact dimension of the baskets. So whichever way I stack them, they would fit in their snuggly. But the face-to-face with something to stabilize both cones at the same time sounds like a good idea too. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[tgmartin]

Yeah, that sounds good and loose polyfill might be a better candidate, if you have it, than paper towels. Have a nice trip and hope you like your new location!