Craigslist – Free!

The free trunk after a little work.

Ever since I scored some great vintage camera gear the other week, I’ve been keeping my eye on the Craigsist free section in Marin for any potential finds, and today I came up lucky.  It was advertised just as ‘Old Steamer Trunk’.  No picture, no further description.  Just a phone number, which I called within 8 minutes of the ad being posted.  I was already the 2nd person to call, but they weren’t able to pick up the trunk right away.  Just my luck – so off to San Rafael (just 5 miles up the road).

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My next project: Recapping some Bowers and Wilkins (B&W) DM600 thrift shop specials.

The offending capacitors on the B&W 600 speaker.

I bought some great (I thought) speakers at a thrift shop on Valencia in San Francisco the other day.  Amidst all the usual crap Sanyo and Matsui plastic junk, I spotted some all black speakers on the bottom shelf with the B&W badge.  Knowing that they make a quality speakers, I overlooked the holes in the speaker grill and the bruised corners and took them the checkout to pay my $25 finders fee.

They felt nice and heavy, and when I plugged them into my Beomaster 1900 amp, they sounded pretty good.  Until I moved the balance control over to the left speaker.  All mids and lows, but no highs.  I removed the grill and confirmed my suspicion – the tweeter wasn’t working.  I opened up the speaker and, woah, just a loose wire.  The red wire wasn’t connected at all, so I connected it and waited for victory.  But it didn’t come, still nothing out of the tweeter.

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Saturday project: Renovating the B&O RL60

The wonderful Bang and Olufsen RL60 Speakers

I just bought some Bang and Olufsen Redline 60 speakers from someone in Oakland using Craiglist to replace the tinny, hollow sounding Sony computer speakers next to my PC monitor.  They came with a Beomaster 5000 amplifier and a non-working B&O remote control the size and weight of a longer Tom Clancy paperback.  It seemed like a pretty good deal for $150 and an hour and half of driving.  Not to mention that I had spent all week bargaining him down from his $275 asking price.

I tried them out at his loft in a bad part of Oakland and they sounded good.  Just a weird clunking sound when I moved the speaker, which the owner explained was a metal plate.  I wasnt’ sure what he meant, but they sounded good and it was a good price.  I got the system down the stairs and into the Saab amid some shifty characters lurking in this industrial part of Oakland.

A 50 minute drive home, and I’m still feeling pretty good about the purchase.  Naturally, the first thing I do when I get them inside is to take them apart to find the source of the clunk.  I discover a loose oval shaped metal place, and a lot of very old brown foam floating around in the speaker’s chassis.

A quick Google and I discover the Beoword.org forums.  It turns out the engineers at Bang and Olufsen employed an ABR (Auxillary Base Radiator) when they designed this first version of the speaker.  Over time (20+ years now) the foam holding the ABR together disintegrates and prevents the ABR from working.

The project: Find some replacement foam, stick it on to the metal pieces of the ABR and put the speaker back together.

The conclusion: A huge improvement.  I’ve replaced the ABR foam on 1 of the 2 speakers and the difference is very noticeable.   I think I have the process down to about 45 minutes for the next one, exlcuding the time it take the glue to dry.

Here’s a picture of the new ABR in place, read on for  the full process.

Replacement foam in place on the RL60, ready for reasembly.

Here’s the finished result, ready for reassembly.  Click below to see the entire process in detail and photos.

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