Spendor LS5/5 and LS5/6 Bass Drivers -- Initial Condition

It is of course every engineers dream come true to find an early original authentic pair of bass driver speakers used in the BBC LS5/5 and LS5/6 loudspeakers. I managed to find an original pair that needed repairs and here you can see their initial condition. The cone material is bextrene which is a type of flexible plastic that is coated with a damping compound. As you can see, someone had brush painted/drizzled the compound all over the cone and the PVC surround. There was also dust, cork particles, and insects stuck on the cone, and it was in a right state. One speaker had a small dust cap, whilst the other had a large cap stuck at an odd angle with doping compound all over it. One speaker had a felt gasket whilst the other had cork gasket. Due to the condition, I felt that the best approach would be to start by removing the mounting gaskets and the surrounds.

As you can see, the doping compound had been painted unevenly, where some parts had multiple layers whilst other parts had only one layer.

As you can see here, the surround was no longer attached to the metal frame rim, hence in this case, I felt it would be better to remove it completely from the frame and re-attach it later after centring.

This second speaker was in a slightly better condition, but the damping compound was very uneven and had also been drizzled onto the PVC surround thereby making it stiff on one side resulting in the cone being off centre.

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