Surround Repair Foam
Reattaching Foam Surrounds on Speakers?
I think I just have a minor issue from accidentally playing some old speakers too loud. The foam surrounds seem to have separated from the cone and it's makes a buzzing noise from the cone vibrating against it. Otherwise, they seem to be working fine and the foam and cone are in good condition.
I want to know if I can just buy some speaker glue and glue the foam back onto the cone (after some cleaning, perhaps). Will that be good enough or do I need to get the entire foam surround replaced?
These are some 15 year old speakers I found in my dad's garage, which I'm only using until I save up enough to buy some better speakers, so I'd prefer to spend as little as possible on repairs (as long as they work)
On old speakers, the foam is a foam rubber that deteriorates over time. You can replace them, if you can find new ones for those particular drivers. But, if you overdrive speakers such that you blow them out, the problem is usually with the voice coil, where it either partially detached from the back of the cone, it overheated and warped (this restricts cone movement, resulting in a raspy sound at lower levels), or the wire in the coil burned open, such that no sound at all comes out of them.
If they're really old, I think you would be better off just replacing the entire drivers (woofers). You have to have some experience at replacing the surrounds and not mess up the operation of the driver.