Safe to open speakers?

[spwath]

Is it safe to open up a speaker (unscrew driver and such) or would there be some sort of seal that would be broken, compromising the sound?

 

I just want to examine the drivers, but I dont want to break my speakers.

[Guest]

It's probably fine. Only thing I could thing of is if there were glue or sealant that would be damaged.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

If they're cheap speakers then there's not much to damage. Can't say for the more exotic stuff.

[Dackzy]

it is fine, I have done it a lot, just be careful.

[spwath]

21 minutes ago, SSL said:

It's probably fine. Only thing I could thing of is if there were glue or sealant that would be damaged.

 

12 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

it is fine, I have done it a lot, just be careful.

Seemed to work fine. IDK too much about crossovers, but this one looks pretty bad, right?

[Guest]

Not much to it, it would seem.

[spwath]

1 minute ago, SSL said:

Not much to it, it would seem.

Seems like there should be more than a 3 micro farad capacitor and another thing (Capacitor?).

Pretty low end speakers though, 100$/pair new. I would check out my higher end mains, but they are crossoverless single driver.

[klh2000]

19 minutes ago, spwath said:

Seems like there should be more than a 3 micro farad capacitor and another thing (Capacitor?).

Pretty low end speakers though, 100$/pair new. I would check out my higher end mains, but they are crossoverless single driver.

The other thing is an inductor, the cap is probably in series with the tweeter, and the inductor in series with the woofer. A linkwitz Riley or Butterworth crossover would be a nice upgrade.

[Stagea]

1 hour ago, spwath said:

Seems like there should be more than a 3 micro farad capacitor and another thing (Capacitor?).

Pretty low end speakers though, 100$/pair new. I would check out my higher end mains, but they are crossoverless single driver.

That's a first order crossover. The one connected to the woofer is an inductor. 

 

The components are quite low cost (as expected). You have what seems to be a metal core inductor and an electrolytic capacitor. More expensive speakers normally come with air core inductors and film capacitors.

 

Most people just swap them with the equivalent higher grade component. You can design different crosses if you want to experiment (and maybe play with driver attenuation too).

 

Another option is to run an active crossover in a biamp configuration.

[spwath]

4 minutes ago, Stagea said:

That's a first order crossover. The one connected to the woofer is an inductor. 

 

The components are quite low cost (as expected). You have what seems to be a metal core inductor and an electrolytic capacitor. More expensive speakers normally come with air core inductors and film capacitors.

 

Most people just swap them with the equivalent higher grade component. You can design different crosses if you want to experiment (and maybe play with driver attenuation too).

 

Another option is to run an active crossover in a biamp configuration.

These are my rear speakers, so I'll probably just leave them be. My fronts are much nicer, but have no crossover, as they are single driver.

 

Thanks for the info though.