Help a first timer repair a Paisley Research Reference Two

I am trying to repair these 25-30 year old speakers and have several questions as I have never done this before. The foam surrounds are severely disintegrated and need to be replaced. Do the dust caps also need to be changed? They don't look damaged to me, but I can see through them, which makes me wonder how effective they are at keeping dust out. They are a semi-rigid weaved fabric, and maybe years ago might have had some kind of coating/finish that has long since peeled away, not sure.

The cones look fine to my newbie eyes. I don't see any major damage.

The tweeters have a dome sort of like the dust covers but much smaller. These feel "tired" and have wear lines/cracks in them. Nothing is actually broken, though, from what I can tell.

I definitely need to order new foam surrounds, but what else do I need? Advice about the most effective way to do this repair is appreciated.

It is my first time, but I can work quite carefully with my hands. I'll definitely be taking my time; there is no rush here. Do dust caps occasionally need to be replaced or are they only removed for shimming? Some instructions I've found say the dust caps should be removed and shims used, while others say it is not necessary. Some say it is more important on larger speakers. The speakers I have are 8". If it's better to remove the dust caps, I will do it that way. I just don't want to do something if it is unnecessary and could potentially ruin the factory job.

Are the shims sold by stores special, with standardized thicknesses, or can I just make my own from index cards or thin cardboard?

Also, if you happen to know about these speakers, would flat or angled attach surrounds would be better? The cone's edge looks fairly flat to me.

I'm looking to order from Speakersworks.com but if there are stores with cheaper shipping to Canada, please let me know.

I have completed the repairs, and the speakers are working well once again. In case anyone else has these speakers, I thought I'd post how things went.

I got the 8" angle attach Cerwin Vega (red, as they were a bit cheaper on sale) foam surrounds and screen/mesh type dust caps. I had a hard time deciding between angle and flat attach, since the lip of the cone seems somewhat angled but then flattens out towards the edge. In the end, it seems that angle attached worked fine. I wasn't sure what kind of dust caps to get (paper, plastic, screen) but decided to stick to the same type (screen) as the originals. The originals looked like they were about 2 1/8", but these were not available, and the 2 1/4" were out of stock, so I ended up getting the 2 1/2" ones. They seem to be fine. I ordered from Speakerworks as they had the best overall price with the shipping to Canada. It came to around $33 USD total. It took about 2 business days for the order to be filled + 5 business days for shipping, so I received it in a bit under 2 weeks.

While waiting for the kit to arrive, I removed the speakers from the cabinet and cleaned them and removed the old foam. This was the worst and hardest part of the repair, as the glue was very sticky and messy even after all these years. I went slowly, peeling off the glue off of the cone's edge with an exacto knife. I used a flat screw driver as a chisel for getting the old sticky glue off the basket's rim. Although some recommend using alcohol to loosen the glue, I found that made more of a mess, and that I was better off just scraping it off dry. Am I ever glad that's over...

I also removed the dust caps by cutting them with a knife around the edge. I had initially tried to use a hairdryer to heat the glue in the hopes of prying off the dust caps without cutting, but it wasn't making good progress and I worried about melting/damaging the glossy coating on the cone. Cutting worked much better. I experimented with various paper thicknesses to get the shims right. It was trial and error, but pretty easy.

Once I received the repair kit, the rest of the repair was relatively easy. Applying the (white) glue to the surrounds and cone edge and matching them together went well, but after letting it dry about an hour I noticed that only the very inside edge (some places as little as 2mm) of the surrounds were attached to the cone, so I applied more glue between the surrounds and the unattached portions of the outer edge of the cone. That seemed to work well and I am now more confident of the repair job. Gluing the outer edge to the basket was easy, and afterwards I installed the paper gasket and flipped the speaker face down to allow it to set and dry overnight. This ended up also gluing the gasket to the surrounds and basket just from the spillover glue.

Thanks to the shims, the cone was well-aligned and there is no voice coil rubbing.

I simply re-installed of the speakers into the cabinet (without forgetting to reconnect the wires correctly!) and they now sound as good as new.

Less than $35 to restore the enjoyment of these speakers, plus some fun in repairing them; I'd say that was a good deal. Thanks to Robert and these forums for pointing me in the right direction.

I didn't think to take any "before" or "during" pictures, but here are some "after" images.