re-foam vs PE replacement

I'm not a big fan of refoaming. Generally speaking, by the time foam rots away there's more wrong then just that; cone material is also deteriorating, spiders are getting weak, the cabinet has probably seen better days, etc. Unless the speakers are some extraordinary piece of audio history it's probably better to just get new drivers.

I used one of the surround replacement kits for the driver on my Velodyne sub, it was pretty easy, and worked well. Years passed though, and now there's something else wrong with it (surround on the passive radiator maybe), but I haven't bothered fixing it yet because I'm not using the sub anymore. When I do get around to it, if its the passive radiator, I'll probably just replace that.

I used the PE re-foam kit on an old pair of Advent Prodigy towers and it worked well. I've been using them for the last 4-5 months and haven't had any issues.

I refoamed a pair of Smaller Advents around Christmas, and my son's using them just fine, so chalk up another one. Cost is $30-40, and I'd check out the rest of the speaker because, as Jim notes, other things go wrong, too.

Have fun,
Frank

I refoamed some Earthquake 15" subs and 6.5" mids from '91 and they work great. I found the absolute lowest price for foam on Ebay and got them. I think they were under $10 each for the 15's.

That said, I did take the more time intensive route and removed the dust caps during refoaming. I shimmed the voice coil with cheap business card stock before gluing the foam to the cone. After it dried, I removed the shims and gently pressed the cone to make sure things were lined up and there was no coil rub. Then I put the cap back on with clear super glue. I can barely see were I glued each dust cap back on.