Last weekend I finally got round to dusting down the hi-fi amp and speakers that I bought 24 years ago and connected them up to the brand new CD player that I bought last year, but had packed away until I could get covers to prevent small fingers from damaging the speakers.
I couldn't really get a satisfactory metal grille solution, so the reason that I connected everything up last weekend was that I'd decided that I could trust the kids.
They've never really touched the surround sound system in the front room.
One of the speakers has a cloth cover. The cloth cover had come off the other speaker.
To my dismay this morning I discovered that Frodo had poked in the centre dome of the woofer. I knew it was him, as he ran a mile when I discovered it. After a good telling off I established that he'd pushed it, thinking it was a button (he was trying to figure out how to turn the music on).
Luckily he hadn't touched the tweeter.
I got him to help me fix it tonight - he helped me turn a few screws whilst I took the speaker out to examine it from all sides.
Googling for a solution suggested the following options.
i) Suck the dome back into shape with a hoover.
ii) Pierce the dome with a pin and hook it back into shape.
iii) Use a piece of sticky tape to pull the dome back into shape - start with say masking tape and work your way through sellotape, parcel tape, gaffer tape etc until you find something just sticky enough.
I decided that option i) could work, but a Dyson might just rip the dome right off.
Option ii) would leave a small hole, that might degrade the sound.
Therefore I went for option iii).
Masking tape, and sellotape were no good, but a piece of parcel tape did the trick. Hooray!
The speaker is now working as well as before (warm bass sound with plenty of middle and crisp clear high's), and has a taught cloth cover protecting it from further mishaps.
For those that don't understand, the title of this post refers to the Not the Nine O'Clock News Gramophone Sketch :-
3 comments:
You're too lenient. You should be minus a child for that sort of behaviour.
Don't worry about how you lose him: New patio, given away to the gypsies, taken into care (Your local social worker should understand)
Next child down should learn their lesson and keep well clear of anything HiFi related :)
Oooh HiFi Flash back...
The amp would be a NAD 3020 a or b? If the Turntable is hooked up I think it's a Dual CS505. I think the speakers are B&W's I forget the model.
If I was going to buy seperates that's the spec' I'd buy now. It seemed to work all those years ago. Why change something that works?
Get your filthy hands off my Desert...
NAD3020A (The B was not as bass heavy as the A, apparently).
Turntable (CS505-2) is languishing in the loft. It's the worst for wear of the original kit, but does still work - have no idea if I'll ever be able to get a new stylus for it. Maybe I'll get one of those USB turntables and digitise the 4 boxes of LP's - clicks, scratches and all (but better sound).
B&W DM110 (The DM stands for Digital Monitor). One of them was slightly shop damaged when I bought them - which is why they were reduced in price at the time. They've survived several parties, a trip in a shopping trolley, a cat sharpening it's claws on the cloth covers, and now a small child poking in the centre dome.
CD player is now a NAD too. C542. Sounds great, but had a recent spot of bother with it not reading the table of contents. Was OK again tonight.
Next upgrade is to get a high capacity i-pod so I can take music with me when I want, and can plug it into the hi-fi too (lossless, rather than MP-3 might be worth trying).
Small child hasn't touched the hi-fi since so drastic measures may not be necessary. He said that he wanted to play some music - so perhaps I should show him what to do.
Post a Comment