A few weeks ago, rog on pinkfishmedia.net refoamed his pair of Royd Seven speakers. With his kind permission, I have reproduced the details here in a useful guide for others who wish to undertake this project. It’s by no means an easy task and not for the faint hearted, however given the cost of picking up a pair of old Sevens (or other older 7ltr Royds) in need of repair, there is little to lose.
Read the full article on refoaming the speakers here.
Encouraged by this I have just reformed a pair of Sapphire IIs. The original foam literally fell to bits and these speakers have to be considered high risk as a second hand buy. The surrounds for my Sintras of a similar age are fine.
The biggest problem was removing the heavy black glue/mastic – what is this stuff ? Anyway it comes off eventually with rubbing alcohol.
There was no way I could get the units out of the cabinet so I was worried about rubbing. Luckily the cones are treated with a stiff shiny black coating and have a perforated ring helping to keep them dimensionally stable.
I took the chance which worked out of putting ring of paper around the pole to help keep the gap and going ahead. So in the end the actual reforming was straightforward. All seems OK and I just have to paint the casting around the foam shiny black where some paint came off getting the black stuff off.