Last week I purchased a pair of Beovox S120s from eBay for just £23. There was no guarantee of condition so I suspected they were sure to have foamrot.
Over the next few weeks/months I am attempting to do my own repair and decided it might be nice to share with other Beoworlders my progress by photographing each stage of the repair. I am sure I will make mistakes or do things in a way that might not be quite right and hopefully others can learn from my errors.

If any mods out there think it's a bad idea to do this thread, speak now or forever hold your piece peace!
You know how carried away I get and as Lee knows, I don't know much about servers etc so don't know whether my photo's clog up the site or not.

Andy T.

Now, before I start, I must make it clear to everyone that I am a non technical person and have never done anything like this before.
I know that half way through this thread people will make suggestions and they will be appreciated. However, the underlying theme of this is to see if someone as thick as myself can do a satisfactory job. Hey, if it all goes wrong, it will have cost me a total of £35!

On eBay these were described as  a speaker set It was only by checking the product page I could work out that they were, in fact S120s
I had asked the seller for the dimensions so I could check but the seller was "selling for my brother who is away at the moment"
Any way, to cut a long story short, I won them I they arrived really quickly.
First thing I did was open the box and sere if they were S120s and was delighted to find they were!
I had read up on the product page and, quote,
"Described to the author by a B&O insider as one of the best passive speakers made by B&O." end of quote
BTW, Who is the author?
I took off the frets to see if they had foamrot. Yes, and a concave cone.

I knew they were worth repairing so went on eBay and found foam surrounds being sold, 'Buy It Now' by a firm in Holland called Audiofriends. I dealt with a guy called Fred who assured me they would fit S120s. I have told Fred that I am doing this thread on Beoworld and would mention his firm. He was quite happy to let me do this.
I subsequently ordred a pair of surrounds and a little tub of "special" glue. These arrived well packaged in three days or so.
Tomorrow (Sunday) I am going to start the job. Wish me luck

Andy T.

Good luck tomorrow!

 

I have been wondering about those kits for a while, I would be interested to know how easy they are to use.

 

Simon 

Good luck Andy! Maybe you now need a Beomaster 6000/8000 to power these wonderful speakers when you have finished the refurb?

Good luck to you Andy, I think you are bit of a perfectionist so it's going to be some very good speakers  

Thank you all

Now, the first thing is always a good idea do gather together all the things you are likely to need.
I decided to do this on my dining room table on a Wynciette sheet folded many times.

The dimple in the cone had been annoying me since I first saw it, so I decided I would sort that out first.
I applied the brushy bit of the vacuum cleaner to it.  If you do the same and it sucks the whole flippin' cone off  then don't blame me!
It was a calculated risk, I figured the brush hairs would hold the cone back and suck out the dimple.
It worked fine

Down in the depths of six of the eight fret retaining holes is a Phlips screw,
Make sure your screw driver is a good fit, I can't think of a worse place to strip the head of a screw!

I held a magnet onto a thin screw driver to lift the screws out.

The connecting plug for the speaker wire is on the back of the S120s and I didn't know whether it would come out with the drivers, so I stood the speaker up and tentatively opened it like a door

What a good do
Lovely long wires with spade connectors and not soldered

Look at that. Like a new 'un!
You wouldn't think these were over twenty years old.

The driver is held to the front plate with these four brackets which have rubber blocks under them.
These screws are really tight and I had to press on very hard. Once again, make sure you have a good fitting screw driver.
Hope I don't slip!

Once the driver is out, it doesn't want to part company with the rubber gasket and front ring.
I had to gently tease it out with a small screw driver.

Then gently pull out the rubber gasket. It's welded together with foamrot.

Before I put the front plate away, I noticed this attatched to one of the clamps.
It doesn't seem to serve any purpose and is loose enough to rattle about.
Anybody any idea?

jandyt:

"Described to the author by a B&O insider as one of the best passive speakers made by B&O." end of quote
BTW, Who is the author?

Me!! And the insider was Ronnie , the first moderator of the official site who looks after the museum. He should know!  

I also have some S120s as well and they too had foam rot. This was before I had heard of Recone so I just replaced the units with new Peerless ones. We should have a shoot out and see which is better! Mine has the odd fitting at the top as well!

I believe the strange fitting-thingy with the hole in it was used for handling at the assembly line, - "cranes" and conveyor rails.
Of course it should be fastened and unable to rattle, the ones I've seen have all been fastened.
You could also dismount it.

Martin

Cheers Martin.
The other one is the same, rattling about even though the screw is tight. I think I will take them off.
Yes Peter, I thought the author may have been you. Why don't you put your name on the articles?
I met Ronnie in Struer, really nice bloke.

Andy T.

Here we have both drivers out and their rubber-like gaskets.
You can see the 'orrible black stuff everywhere.

Now the laborious job of getting rid of it.
For these gaskets I have decided to scrape them with a small screw driver.
Here is my first mistake. The nasty black stuff is like wet tar and I was scraping it onto the sheet. This meant I was going to be working in my own mess. It can't be brushed up and the brushy bit of the vacuum wouldn't lift it either.

Ah! That's better. I can use loads of these kitchen rolls and keep changing them.

Any body guess what the little black square thing is that keeps cropping up on my photo's?

After I had removed the bulk of the foamrot from the gaskets I dipped some cotton-wool in meth's and cleaned the residue with that. It came off quite easily but still felt tacky so I put them in the sink with some Fairy liquid and scrubbed them with a nail brush.
Perfect!