Yeah, I think there's still one in Ohio, so no help and the humongous one in Lawrenceville, Ga. got scrapped in the early '90s when no one wanted it.
GM
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Yeah, I think there's still one in Ohio, so no help and the humongous one in Lawrenceville, Ga. got scrapped in the early '90s when no one wanted it.
GM
You know, for the extra $100.00 in shipping charges ( $21.00 x 4, plus $$16.00 towards insurance ), I would just send them to GPA .
GPA's latest versions of the 604 are reputed by many to be the best balance of ( top to bottom ) FR extension .
I would also consider having new 34647 diaphragms installed while there.
:)
I once took one of my 605's apart because I was curious. After I reconed them, one was way louder than the other one. So I took it also apart, and sent both of them back to Altec for a remagging. Got them back, and reconed them once again. Been playing ever since. You have to weigh what you paid to what's it worth for the full monty. (Especially since one of them was dropped) Dropping them alone has the effect of demagnetizing , even though they're not out of alignment.
And sorry I didn?t mention the broken cover earlier. I had forgotten the one came to me like that. I swapped a good cover from a 806 I had laying around. I saw the broken cover still sitting on my garage shelf today and it reminded me.
Anyways, I know that makes a difference in what I should probably do.
I think when I looked into to it in the past it was 400-450$ to have both drivers reconed. Plus around 250$ for shipping both ways. I paid around 600$ for the pair of woofers, so you figure I would have around 1300$ into the pair.
If I was in this position, I would just bit the bullet now and send them off to GPA and be satisfied that the "official" cones were installed, and remagged by the place that does the regularly ( I am not knocking at GW and his abilities one bit at all). Especially *IF* you were ever to sale/trade them, someone might give you grief or some other crap with them not having actual GPA cones ( we know how some buyers can be) , etc.... but as the saying goes, YMMV.
But...... If you can find a speaker repair place down there in FL that has both the remmager and is able to recone them 604's , then I would forgo the shipping to GPA option and all the possibilities one has to deal with when shipping drivers as large as these and drive them to the nearest facility/ies myself.
I?ve been doing some research on the regaussing. It looks like there is GPA, a place out in California (used to be Orange County Speaker), and maybe some place in Indiana. In 20 years there probably won?t be any place left to do it. That?s one of the things that makes me want to get these 604s redone now.
How are ferrite magnets magnetized? Or are they manufactured in a different way?
Same way, just different settings.
GM
So then these machines do exist, but just in manufacturing facilities and not in repair shops for the most part. I bet there are quite a few over in China where all the audio drivers are made now. :eek:
Correct, among others, they probably are still using some we shipped over shortly after Nixon's visit, though at the time there were rumors that's how he got his 'foot in the door', so to speak.
I left a message yesterday to a long time ago forum member that's likely to know of any places, so while hope 'springs eternal', not holding my breath as manufacturer's machines likely won't have the jigs required unless large, round one piece magnets are part of it.
GM
The Speaker exchange wants 225$ per speaker to recone with the GPA cones. I still need to get a quote from GW and GPA.
GW says he can get them to sound like the GPA cones using a combo of off the shelf parts. If I remember correctly from the last recones he did for me it would be around 1/2 to 2/3 of the price to have him do it.
My next project after getting these drivers redone is fixing the veneer on my Model 17 cabs. They have some corner damage. Also one of the grills is broken, and both need to have new cloth put on.
Then, I need to build new cabs for my 2242 bass drivers. I was using a single box before, and now I want to do two individual boxes for them, and stack the M17 cabs on top.