In the previous post I mentioned that this not a “how-to” serious of posts. This is merely a “what I have been up to in the pandemic” discussion.
Shopping
The first thing on the shopping list was a speaker foam surround kit. I went to my usual source, SimplySpeakers.com, and ordered the kit for the Beovox S2200. I made sure to confirm the dimensions of the foam rings. The kit includes two rings, a tube of special glue, a brush, and instructions.
Finding replacement tweeters was much more of a problem.
Ohm … Ohm … Ohm …
There are several difference values by which speakers are rated. One of which is ohms. Ohms are a value of resistance. The higher the resistance the greater the ohm value. In other words, if you have a 8 ohm speaker it has more resistance than a 4 ohm speaker. This can be a big deal in some circumstances.
The rather fuzzy photo on the right shows the bad tweeter from the speaker pair. It is clearly marked as 4 ohm. A review of the service manual confirmed that this is, indeed, a 4 ohm tweeter.
The woofers in the S2200 speakers are 8 ohm. The tweeters are 4 ohm. What does this mean? On top of that, these are supposed to be 2.5″ tweeters, but a measurement of the units reveals that there is not one dimension that is 2.5″
Searching for a replacement tweeter reveals that there are not many 4 ohm tweeters at 2.5″ out there. The few that do exist do not necessarily fit into the holes of the speaker cabinets.
Reading up on speaker resistance reveals that in most situations the ohm of the replacement tweeters may not make any difference, but, in other situations they might. It all has to do with the flapdoodle on the flimflam on the third Tuesday of January 16th.
My solution was very, very simple. I searched for tweeters that met these requirements:
- The tweeters had to be 4 ohms
- The tweeters had to fit in the holes in the speaker cabinets
- The tweeters frequency had to be acceptable with the 2000hz crossovers
- The price of the tweeters had to be less than $15 each because I am not going to pay $35 each for something that may or may not work. So there.
I was able to find perfectly-sized speakers for about $9 each. Their frequency response is something like 1000hz to 22,000hz, and that is perfectly OK.
Getting the Fix In
Step one was, of course, to get the woofers out. In the Beovox S2200 they are held in with clips that are secured with little screws. It was a simple process to unscrew the clips and lift the woofers out. Note that in the photo on the right we see that there is a gasket under the speaker to make an air-tight seal. S2200 speakers are of the pressure chamber design which requires a sealed box. Hence, the gasket under the woofer. Naturally, the tweeter has a gasket, too. In this instance, the tweeters that I purchased had the gaskets built into their frames.
Repairing the woofer is fairly straight forward. To see how to do it properly, check out the videos at the Simply Speakers Web site at simplyspeakers.com.
The photo on the right shows one of the woofers with the damaged foam surround rings. The steps for repair can be summed up quickly with:
- Carefully remove the gasket and set it aside
- Note that this is not the same gasket that is shown in the photo above. This gasket is glued to the front of the steel speaker frame.
- Remove the old foam
- Clean up the glue and muck
- Glue the new surround to the paper cone
- Glue the new surround to the steel speaker frame
- Glue the gasket back into the steel frame
Once the replacement foam is in place and the glue is dry the units can be put back into the speaker cabinets and secured with the clips and screws.
Replacing the tweeters was a little bit more tricky. The old tweeters were square, but the new ones are round. In addition, the old tweeter had terminals the same size. The photo on the right shows those terminals.
The new tweeters have different sized terminals. One terminal is 1/4 inches wide, the other is 3/16 inches wide. The terminals on the old tweeters are much smaller. That means the wires cannot be directly fitted to the new tweeters.
The tweeter wires use simple crimp-on connectors. I popped down to the local AutoZone and found perfect connectors for this application. Not only are they the right size, but they are also gold plated.
Why AutoZone (or any other auto parts store)? Simple, really. Car audio is a Big Deal, in case you have not noticed. As a result, higher quality components, such as gold-plated connectors, are usually easily found at your car parts emporium. “Back in the day” I would have gone to Radio Shack, but those days are long gone, as is Radio Shack.
I crimped the connectors to the wires and as you can see in the photograph. To be totally honest, I was extremely pleased with the quality of these little parts.
The old tweeters were paper cone units with square steel frames. That design is rare these days. The new tweeters have the dome design and round plastic frames. The small domes do the same job as the larger paper cones.
Because the new tweeters use three screws, as opposed to the old tweeters that used four, so I had to drill new holes. That had to be carefully done as I did not want to damage these Bang & Olufsen speakers. That is a thought to horrible to entertain!
Assembly of the repaired speakers was very quick. In the photo on the right you can see the pair. One speaker has the front grill on, the other has the grill off so you can see the woofer and new tweeter.
How Do They Sound?
The last step was to connect these Beovox S2200 speakers to an amp and check them out. They come with wire already attached and the famous B & O connector (OK, it is not an exclusive B & O connector, but it is weird enough make it annoying if you have to connect to some other brand of amp or tuner) on the ends.
A quick hook-up and we were off to the races.
The conclusion — Not bad! These little B & O bookshelf speakers sound very good. Sure, they lack the base of the bigger Tannoy PBM-8 speakers that are their neighbors, but the S2200s have much smaller woofers. I have been playing ZZ Top, Julie London, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers through them and I thoroughly satisfied.
I am 99.999% sure that they do not sound as good as the B & O Beolab 6000 speakers that are on eBay right now for $1,044.87, but at the price I got them for, who is to complain?
Besides, it was a fun challenge to repair them and get them working again. And, besides, they are Bang & Olufsen!