Tube Amp Archive

Hey guys,
I have a 10" Alnico Jensen with a 1CM long tear near on the surround area. I've searched a bit on the internet and got some different opinions about what glue to use, some suggesting wood glue, white school glue, super glue, gasket making silicone, etc (gotta love the internet). Some people also reinforce the rip with tissue paper, coffee filter, dryer sheet, etc.

I'm not in a rush to get this fixed and the speaker is worth spending a few bucks on, so I don't want to just grab whatever glue I can get from Home Depot and have it fail in 2 years. Is there any product that's made for this, or can anyone recommend any glues that they have used and has held up?

A gelled super glue product over some sort of matrix material works very well.
I have a fine woven fiberglass cloth that I use, but tissue or coffee filter works well also.
Something to bridge the gap and give the glue something to adhere to.
Gelled because it's not so runny.
I have several repairs that I have done and all still work fine.

I've repaired with contact cement and material from other non guitar speakers I seem to collect. I even managed to match ribs on my last repair.
One of my friends used liquid electric tape with a piece of 600 grit black sand paper which worked for the few months he kept it.

For patching speaker cones I use Elmers white or wood glue slightly thinned with water, and hemp rolling paper for the patch. The hemp paper tends to be stronger and more flexible than tissue & paper towel some people use. Don't over-wet the cone paper or you'll have an ever widening sink hole. For extra strength patch the back of the cone if you can get to it. Good to let the patch area dry out between applications if you go for multi layers.

Gotta say, I do like R Wood's idea of using paper liberated from kaput speakers. Let nothing go to waste!

Ive used fabric glue with good success is patched a c15n that got a bed rail shoved through it.with tissue paper had to build up several layered in places where the cone was gone suprisinly it sounded good
Come on Leo I doubt many musicians have rolling papers laying around

cbass wrote: Come on Leo I doubt many musicians have rolling papers laying around

Naah, never happened... gotta go pester the road crew guys. Maybe the truck driver has some. The musos used all theirs up and they weren't fixing speakers.

Aleene's tacky glue works great, reinforce with what ever paper stuff you have around I like a single ply of TP, but that other stuff would probably work better.

I'm thinking about common household stuff...Elmers and coffee filter paper should do a good job. Color it with a black Sharpie first so it doesn't flash. Of course you know to tear the paper, not cut with a blade or scissor.

Coffee filter paper is not the way, sorry. It's water absorbent , to thin, and actually made from quality untreated (I hope) wood pulp. Not a good patch material. I think tissue paper (as it is sold in hobby/fabric stores) is typically made of synthetic materials so this is better from the gate, although very thin. Certainly nothing like toilet tissue!!

Anyway, for my money the best material is material taken from an identical speaker. At least this way your cone contour/pattern is duplicated. Check with a reconer, they save old cones for this very purpose and $$ talks.

As to diluting water based glues - I read about this all the time on the Internet - I'm suggesting that if you try this, don't dilute more than 2/1 (water/glue). I've read on a forum where someone was cutting Weldbond white glue 10/1 and using it to dope speakers. Give me a break, advice not worth a shite. As far as I'm concerned, contact cement or other glues that remain flexible and are not water based are the way.

One last comment, using the Weldbond for general speaker doping, you could use it undiluted for a glossy, similar to the Celestion look, or dilute it ever so slightly with water - something like five drops (!!!) of water for a fifty cent piece size of Weldbond in small mixing container or cup. Remember here that the more water you use to dilute the Weldbond, the more satin to flat looking the surface gloss will be. Whatever brush or mixing vessel you use, just rinse things off and you can reuse them forever.

Another vote for Aleene's Tacky Glue. Works great, stays pliable.

I have a friend that swears he will only use hot glue and an old cone for the patch.

Good ideas above... I think I will take a crack at it with some of the junk drivers I have here.

Tony

I hade success with "Aleen's"...Better would be anything containing glyptal which is available in hobby stores as model airplane dope

I have a 10" Jensen Alnico that I repaired with brown paper from a paper bag and Elmers, and it is my best sounding speaker.

I repaired a few rips in my old Goodmans using unbleached coffee paper and slightly diluted wood glue.
Always tear the paper so it feathers at the edges.
I patched on both sides of the repair - and all has been good for about 4 years so far. No noticeable problems.
One thing I did that helped, was to use the edge of a chopstick to roll the paper into the shape of the cone's ridges etc and to get the glue spread out well with good consistent coverage.

Mty tears were from a really bad habit of throwing all my stuff like pedals etc into the back of the cab. oops.

Amazed about the synthetic/solvent based glues suggested above.

Paper pulp is *made* out of cellulose paste + water + water soluble adhesive (+ additives such as pigments, etc.) and so a water based adhesive + some cellulose fiber is the "native" repair stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdgbTl2rAS0
at 1:29 , 2:22 and 2:41 you can clearly see the watery consistence of speaker pulp, it's not even a paste.

Somebody should sell little cans of the stuff in paste form; but since none is commercially available, make your own or flexible (while wet) sticky patches made out of the same stuff.

I make and repair speakers since forever, always have spare cones around; strongest (although ugly) repair is to wet a precut piece of cone with well diluted white carpenter's glue, let it rest for half an hour so it becomes very flexible and sticky, we want it to copy the repaired speaker curves, not recover its older shape when drying up, then brush carpenter's glue on the broken cone and apply the wet flexible patch over it, then let it dry up unmolested overnight .

For very small tears or punctures, where edges meet (not when chunks of cone are missing), wet both sides of the tear, inside and out, with *slightly* diluted white carpenter's glue, the idea is to roll back already dried and pressed cone material back into original paste, or as close as we can get, then with a small brush with tip dipped in glue brush cone surface towards the tear, the idea is to "comb" fibers towards the tear so they cross in the middle, then when drying up they will join as new.

To reinforce the joint (you should) make a little paste out of slightly diluted glue and some cellulose fiber.

Wet and crumbled between the fingers old cone paper is best (what I use bcause I always have some around) but in a pinch tissue or toilet paper is not that bad.

The main difference is that tissue paper class does have cellulose fiber, no doubt about that, but it's wood fiber only, and it's very short because wood is boiled and passed through a giant "food blender" which cuts it too much.

Real cone paste does have short fiber in the mix (say, 60%) but also "long fiber" , which comes from cotton or at least from surplus rags, but you won't get that in home use amounts.

And hemp cones, jokes aside, do have very strong hemp fiber added to the mix.

Yes I agree that solvent based adhesives, superglue, contact cement or even epoxy will "stick" to cone surface, but that will be a "surface" adhesion, will not get into the fiber like water based will and in any case will be very rigid, while cone material is flexible.

Now, if you are repairing an aluminum cone, anything is fair game.