Obtaining information about the inner workings of speaker reconing is no easy task. It can take a long time and lots of trial and error to truly understand the trade well.
A couple of weeks ago, a client of mine gave me a dozen or so speakers to recone. When he gave them to me, he mentioned that most of them had been reconed with generic kits and a couple with factory kits. When I started removing the old parts from the drivers, it became obvious which ones had the generic kits. Some had ripped cones that were a different shape than the factory ones. Some of the cones had buckled. A couple had cones and spiders that had come detached from the voice coil from improper adhesives and/or application. Others had tinsel leads that had snapped off of the cone from being assembled too short, and some had spiders detached from the frame from improper adhesives and/or application. All of this was to save a couple bucks, when in the end it will wind up costing the customer more. This is definitely not the first time I have seen this, nor will it be the last. But it did make me wonder if some people just don't understand why to use original factory kits.
What Exactly Is a Recone?
In a very basic description, a speaker recone is done when a speaker's parts are damaged from improper use or just worn out from a long life. All of the internal moving parts get stripped out and are replaced with brand new ones. These parts typically include the voice coil, tinsel leads, spider, cone, surround, mounting gasket and dust cap.
Recone kits are typically sent out in one of two different ways, pre-assembled or not pre-assembled. Pre-assembled kits will usually have the spider and cone adhered to the voice coil, or sometimes just the spider is adhered to the voice coil and not the cone. Non pre-assembled kits come with all of the parts to put the kit together, but, you guessed it, all of the parts have to be measured and put together by the reconer. Neither of the two types is necessarily better than one or the other, if assembled correctly. In most cases, generic recone kits come in the non pre-assembled form. This is, in part, due to the nature of generic kits which can, for the most part, be sized and assembled to fit in almost any driver due to the limited combination of cones, spiders, voice coil sizes and impedances, etc.
On a side note, there are also a few manufacturers that do not sell recone kits. If a driver gets damaged, they require the user to send back the entire driver to them for repair.
Recone Kits vs. Reconer
Equally important as the kit itself is the reconer. Some consider speaker reconing to be somewhat of an art form. It takes a lot of practice before a reconer can understand the application techniques and specific adhesives well enough to get a damaged speaker to perform as well as the original and avoid coming apart in any way.
With this said, even a factory kit can be damaged if improper reconing techniques are used. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the reconer to be sure that he or she is working with the correct materials and using the proper techniques.
What's the Big Deal?
Every speaker enclosure has a unique sound. Part of what makes that unique sound is the driver within the box. Some manufacturers use completely custom drivers, some will use a speaker manufacturer and modify an existing model and some just use stock drivers "right off the shelf." When a driver needs to be fixed, the manufacturer will almost always sell a replacement repair kit that includes the same parts as in the original driver.
On the flip side of that, generic kits are installed sometimes as well. All of the parts are sized up individually to fit in that particular speaker, for the most part not taking into account what the sonic characteristics would be compared to that same speaker with factory parts installed. Such things like thickness and material of the spider cone and surround, voice coil material and cone/surround coatings, among others, can appear to be a minor difference, but can also substantially affect sound quality and performance.
For example, with a generic recone, a parameter that can be overlooked is the power rating of the voice coil. If you take a speaker that's generically reconed with a lower-rated voice coil than the original and put it into a powered box that is expecting a certain driver, don't expect it to last too long. The amplifier module's limiter knows no difference between the original and the lower-rated voice coil (unless it is networkable and has adjustable limiters), so it will still send up to the same amount of voltage into the poor lower-power-rated voice coil until it's blown into oblivion.
Keep in mind that this is just one of an almost infinite number of problems that can come about when using anything other than factory-specified parts.
Don't get me wrong, generic kits do have some benefits at times, too. There really is no other option when a manufacturer doesn't sell a kit, if the driver is older and kits are no longer available for it, or if you're just interested in tinkering around and making custom drivers. But when you get down to it and a factory kit is available, is it worth it to NOT go with a factory kit?
Summing Up
Finding a good reconer can be difficult. A good place to start would be to ask one of the bigger sound companies in town that typically go through a lot of damaged drivers.
Using factory parts is your best option when repairing drivers, for reliability as well as sonically matching to the original specs of the driver. Repairing with factory parts may be more expensive, but this falls under the "do it right once, or do it twice" philosophy.
