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How Effective Are Speaker Foam Repair Kits?

Many well known loudspeaker manufacturers including JBL and Infinity made some very poor choices in the 70s and 80s when they used foam surrounds for their drivers. Unfortunately, almost all of the foam surrounds of these speakers started deteriorating just 10 years after purchase. Other parts of these speakers were also aging rather quickly.

Fortunately, there is hope if you still own one of the good old Infinity Kappa speakers or just love vintage stuff. Dozens of third-party manufacturers including PartsExpress.com and SimplySpeakers.com are now offering reasonably priced speaker foam repair kits that not only fix the speaker surrounds but also holes in your speaker grill. Depending on your personal budget, you can give your „babies“ a complete makeover. SimplySpeakers even offers a complete reconing service for tougher jobs that cannot be fixed via do-it-yourself kits. Reconing essentially means replacing the diaphragm, voice coil and any internal wiring. This doesn’t come cheap but can be worth the price. The results are often stunning. If done well, you won’t believe how fantastic your speakers still sound even by modern standards.

For very exotic home stereo loudspeakers, there is often not much hope. Your best bet would be to contact the manufacturer or look for replacement drivers in the secondhand market. Similar speaker models may be offered on eBay that you could simply cannibalize. On the other side, drop-in replacements are not easy to find as the dimensions of the woofers differ in almost all cases. In addition, you probably need to drill additional holes into the speaker enclosure. I personally wouldn’t feel very comfortable doing that. And the internal crossover of your loudspeaker would have to be adapted, too. All of this could result in too many sonic compromises. But it could be acceptable if you just need the speakers for background listening and plan on getting newer ones in the near future.

In summary, speaker foam repair kits only make sense if your loudspeaker is from a larger manufacturer and if damages are minor.