I thought someone might be interested in my latest project restoring the the first good speakers I ever owned, received for my 17th birthday in the late 80s. Over the years I've kept them mostly for nostalgic reasons as I moved up through better and better speakers.
At one point in the 90s for some reason I even decided to paint them with this horrible black flat paint. Horrible. It's all scratched up and even comes off on your fingers.
So a few weeks ago I decided to restore them. Beyond refinishing the surface, one of the foam surrounds was coming off slightly, and I also wanted to try replacing the crossover caps.
So first I acetoned off the paint. I was expecting to also take down the finish on the veneer but it turns out the veneer is vinyl and it just cleaned up to like-new condition with the acetone! The whole job took around an hour for both speakers.
Then I bought $6 Jantzen 4.7 microF caps to replace the cheap electrolytic original caps in there. Before replacing them, I took a REW measurement @ 2 inches from the tweeter, and then re-measured after replacing. The new caps reduced drop-off above 15kHz measurably, bringing up the 20kHz by ~4dB.
But the real test was the listening! It's surprising how much cleaner and brighter they sound now. Now I remember why I bought them at 17!
This was a very fun, satisfying, and cheap project which I'd highly recommend if you have any similar vintage speakers lying around.
