Cerwin Vega restoration project (Pic Heavy)
 

Not sure if the audio section is just for car audio, or any audio, but I wanted to post up a build thread of a pair of Cerwin Vega VS-100's I picked up on Craigslist for $20 bucks. The foam woofer surrounds were dry rotted, so I ordered a replacement kit from http://www.simplyspeakers.com/ for $30 bucks. Replacing a foam surround isn't difficult to do, and most of the actual difficulty is prepping the woofer by removing all of the old foam surround and cleaning off the woofer cone and basket to install the new surround.

This is my first speaker restoration and the first time I replaced woofer surrounds. Overall i'm pleased with how everything turned out. Since i'm posting this thread late in the evening, I'll hook them up and give them a test run tomorrow.

I was able to date the speakers back to a manufacturing date (1994) stamped on the woofer magnet.

Pictures will be posted in the order from when I bought them to the finished product.

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$50 investment. Come out looking good...Have you had a chance to let them play?

Thanks :D

I haven't played them yet since I finished them up last night. I was going to this morning, but the g/f woke up with a headache so i'm going to wait a bit.

I did play them when I picked them up, and the mids and highs are pretty strong.

It annoys me that the logos aren't straight :o

Interesting story behind that :laugh:

I was so focused on getting the surrounds glued on right that I forgot that the speaker basket has two sets of mounting holes once I glued the mounting ring back in place. It's an easy fix... All I have to do is drill new holes in the cabinet and I can have them straight across again, but I haven't decided yet to do that. Back in the car audio days of the late 80's up to the mid 90's or so, it was an "old school" thing to turn your CV's like that.

Just did a maximum volume test on the speakers using my g/f's stereo receiver. It doesn't have enough power to push them to their limits, but it was enough to wake up her lazy kids sleeping in and here them biatching about being woken up :laugh:

I like the logos like that. It is how I do mine. To be a little different. Looking good though, glad you saved those

Thanks, i'm glad I was able to save them, too. I've come across others for sale, but the asking price was just way too much. I had an idea of buying speakers and fixing them up to sell, but when someone asks $70-100 dollars that's just not feasible.

i'm curious on how you rebuilt those speakers

It wasn't too difficult. Most of the work is in the prep of cleaning off the old deteorated foam surround. The replacement kit comes with detailed directions on how to do it all. It's all glued on with the supplied adhesive designed for speaker repair.

dope

I'm sure the same thing could be done for car audio speakers as well. No sense in throwing away perfectly good speakers that can be repaired.

Nicely done!

i didn't even realize speakers can be repaired like that. we're so used to just buying new when old fails that a lot of time we don't even think twice of rebuilding. It makes perfect sense when talking about quality products to begin with and giving them new like.

great job on the project.

was that black stain or enamel that you used to refresh the cabinets?

did you have a choice of color for the speaker foam replacement?

Thanks :)

Speakers are one of the few electronic products you can fix and repair and get parts for.

The paint I used was a black semi-gloss spray paint I got at Home Depot called Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover. Works great and gives you more coverage than traditional spray paint. I used one can per cabinet with having a little bit left over.

As far as the speaker foam replacement color, I'm sure you can get something other than the traditional Cerwin Vega orange color. I have seen them redone using black foam before. Some models of CV's didn't come with their traditional orange surrounds so it is possible. With the speaker covers on you can't even see it.

This type of repair is really only valid for older speakers that use a foam around the woofers that would dry out and deteriorate over time. The newer speakers typically use rubber around the woofers which will last much longer than the foam.

Yeah you're right, newer speakers use a better material. The surround replacements I got are made of a different material that will last much longer than the original stuff. I don't recall exactly what its made of.

I recorded 3 videos, two of them short, and the other one almost 6 minutes and uploaded the two short ones to Youtube. After 3 hours trying to upload the long video, it stopped uploading at 60% when my internet went down... so hopefully i'll try to get that uploaded this weekend.

Here are the first two...



This second video is a little longer, with the bass set at zero, and it was still shaking the floor. I can't really turn it up too much because my crazy neighbor who lives downstairs gets pissed, despite the fact that she gets into screaming matches with her boyfriend at 2 and 3 am in the morning.

The video's just don't do these speakers justice. Their bass even at low volume is strong, crisp and clean. Mids and highs are also crisp and clean.

Finally got the 3rd video uploaded...

Looks real great I always loved those old school CV's. I recently picked up a Cerwin Vega Stroker Pro 12d4, the ones with the pole in. This unfortunately needs a new recone, wayy too big a job for me. Gonna send it out, lol.

Love that those only cost 50 bucks to complete

Nice find :D

Where are you going to send it out to? There's a place down here in Florida called Simply Speakers that does that sort of work. They are the ones I purchased my refoam kit from.

So this is the one?

http://images.devicemanuals.com/getc...bXB3Wnc9PT0%3D

That is where i plan to send it, i believe they are an authorized CV shop. also while the pic above is the new stroker, I am talking OLD School. See video below from you tube, those are 15s, mine is a single 12. The OLD CV's are more efficient. While the newer one will take atleast 600watts to get moving, the old school desging only need about 200watts. However the problem is you need a pretty large box. thats the trade off more efficient = BIG POWER from lesser amount watts = BIG BOX, LOL. I hope to one day build an OLD school set up

Yep i'm familiar with those old school Stroker's. They're pretty badazz, even today. And you're correct, they do need a pretty large enclosure. I've seen them in 15" and 18", but I don't recall ever seeing a 12" before.

A little CV history if you aren't aware... Back in the 70's, there was a movie made called Earthquake. The movie makers went to CV and asked them to design an audio system to shake the movie theater, giving people more realism. These new movie theater's were called Sensurround, owned by Univeral Studio's, and CV built these huge speaker cabinets and placed them throughout the movie theater. These new CV speakers (originally designed in the 60's for rock concert speakers) were the first to hit 130dB @30Hz. These huge speaker cabinets created so much bass, they were actually causing structural damage to the movie theaters and were eventually dismantled.

CV was a big pioneer in high end audio. In the 50's, they developed the first solid state component amplifier. By the 60's, they were a major manufacturer supplying speakers for companies like Fender, Sunn and Vox. Also, CV had formed professional relationships with big musical names like The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Peter Frampton. CV was also the first audio manufacturer to develop it's own digital recordings to testing of their speakers.

Last December, CV was bought by Gibson, and is a division of their newly formed Gibson Pro Audio department.

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WOW thanks for the History, i really never looked into that. Thats awesome to know.

Back in the days it was all about the 15's and 18's, the 12s got lost in the mix, lol. What i want to do is put two 15's inside a Mini cooper, with some oldschool Orion HCCA or US Amps the hugh surfboard types. I would love to pair them with two Hifonics VIII Collossus amps thats my ultimate set up. vocals who needs vocals, spine bustin bass thats all i want lol haha

ooh the good ol days

Orion's are good amps. I had one of those back in the day. Clean power is the best power.

Agreed

Wanna get your nostalgia part of your brain pumping. Check this out. His youtube channel is more updated. His video's are awesome and you can truly see how under rated the old school stuff is

http://www.oldschoolstereo.com/2012/...ute-video.html

Cool thanks for the link. I think i'm subscribed to that guy's Youtube channel... i'll check that for sure in a min.