Attn: Check the screws on your drivers!

This past weekend I finally remembered to check the tightness (or lack of)
of the screws retaining my drivers. I checked a total of 32 screws and none of them were tight, in fact some of them weren't far from falling out.
It took several turns on the majority of the screws before they were tight.

The end result is tighter and better defined bass response and less glare in the midrange. I'm glad I finally remembered to do this, it's been well over a year since I last checked. If you guys listen to your system as much as I do, and listen at fairly loud volume levels, check your screws, they may need a little attention.

 

Do your speakers fall off the stands too? Betcha you don't have a groundhog problem! Use nail polish before screwing those back in. They won't ever come loose unless you mean it.

 

It's also a good idea to feed test tones to the frequency range covered by each driver on a regular basis. I've been to audio equipment shows where believe it or not individual drivers on some of the speakers on demo were actually not functioning and the people in charge were unaware of the problem. Not a good way to demo your product!

There are many good test discs that can be used for this purpose if you don't have a frequency generator. I use a Denon cd that has about 99 different test tracks of all kinds. It is an often overlooked but valuable accessory.

 

Yes Khorn, good idea. I have several test discs with tone generators, I use them frequently.

 

Care should be taken not to play test tone too loud. You can do more harm than good as it is real easy to burn a voice coil out with a steady state signal.

- Gabe

 

Funny...out of all the speakers I own, removing the screws is difficult by hand, and in most cases are already a little TOO tight. Must depend on the manufacturer, and the screw. With those fat self-tapping wood screws, never a problem. Finer threads aren't as tight. Machine threads (T-nuts) have not been as tight as I've hoped...prime candidates for loosening.

One problem is that a loose driver causes a cabinet leak in a sealed system. Good way to bottom out a woofer.

 

True enough although on most test discs the tones you would use would be recorded at about a -20db level. Look out if you play back RMS signals recorded at 0 VU!!!

 

Good reminder!! Also cleaning the terminals is always a good idea too.

 

I was having a problem with a pair of used ProAc's a couple months back. I thought the woofers were blown as they were bottoming out.
After much correspondence with distributer, not very cordial, I took them to a local dealer. First thing he did was tighten all the driver fasteners and found at least one binding post loose.
Problem resolved.
Good advice!

 

I had a pair of mid 70's Realistic speakers that were acoustic suspension. They had decent bass, but unfortunately I bottomed out and toasted the woofers. What was interesting was that the connections on the back were screw terminals, and an RCA jack; the speaker came with plastic plugs to use on the RCA jacks to plug the leak. These speakers used T-nuts for the woofer screws. Problem there was that the T-nuts would sometimes lose their grip in the wood, preventing tightening. All the more reason I prefer big fat wood screws (with deep threads) to fasten a speaker down.

I rebuilt that pair of speakers, incidentally. Originally an 8" woofer, it's now a 6-1/2" vented system. Very nice!

I'm afraid I may have slightly damaged one of the woofers in my Small Advents. It had a leak and bottomed out. Now it rubs a bit...but only when there is a *lot* of bass.

 

i took your advice.

out of 28 screws in my klipsch, 20 needed tightened.

 

You know I listen to music on my system generally 2-3 hours every day, hardly a day goes by that it is'nt fired up and I always overlooked checking those screws. In my case there was a noticable improvement in sound.

Last night I had a Blues night, played Sam McClain(Give it up to love), a very nice Audioquest release with fantastic bass, this record will test your woofers for sure. Prior to that I listened to Jimmy Rogers, Bluebird test pressing I purchased last year when Acoustic Sounds had its test pressing blowout, if you don't own this record, buy it, if you like blues that is.