Tinsel wire repair

Broken tinsel? Ripped cone? Peeling surround? We're not mind readers.

The two wires that go from the terminals to the cone? if so its called the tinsel leads.

Take it to someone familiar with electronics. SOME of the wire types are very hard to solder. These are kind of "tinsel" wires for flexibility.

They likely can be repaired and some shrinkfit tubing put over the splices.

Hello gatmanfromda,

I'm assuming you mean the "tinsel" lead going from the connector to the sub cone. In many cases, the wire can be soldered back on. It takes care and patience and you need to be sparing with the solder and prevent it from stiffening the tinsel lead. Otherwise it will tear out again when the sub cones moves out. If the cone itself was damaged when the lead pulled off, you can use silicone sealant to repair it. Again, be sparing with the silicone and allow it 24 hours to set up before trying to operate the sub. If the wire pulled off from the connector terminal, just solder it back on.

Hope this helps.

Hello gosecoa,

The tinsel leads can usually be soldered back on OK. You may need to remove a small amount of the sleeve. Make sure that your soldering iron is clean and well tinned. Hold the tinsel lead gently in position with a nonconductive tool and apply the soldering iron to the edge where it meets the solder pad on the back of the sub cone. After the solder has melted (usually you won't need to add any additional solder), remove the iron first and continue holding the lead into place until the solder hardens.

Hope this helps.

also after repairing unless it's done by a true professional normal solder will not work.. it doesn't flex as well as it does from factory, and it's very hard to extend tinsle lead length, I would suggest returning to original store for swap or return to JL for swap.. (or get new ones.... not JL :) )

First pry off the rubber gasket. Then take a razor and cut out the cone, cut as close to the outer edge of the surround as you can. Then snip the tinsel leads connecting the cone to the spider. Then take your knife and cut out the spider. The cone and voice coil should now slide out. The rest of the speaker can be takin apart with a screwdriver and hammer.

Now hide from the owner of the speaker, he will probably want to hurt you.

Guy

Hello. I do speaker reconing and amp rebuilds for a living and the L7's often suffer from tinsel leed wire breakage which can cause "poping" and "screaching" noises in the sub in various cone positions. You need to remove the sub and push straight down on the cone repeatly and determine if you can feel or hear crunching noises to make sure the voice coil and/or spider are not damaged. A faulty leed wire can usually be identified by a dark spot or obvious breakage. All of the L5 and L7 models can be successfully repaired as long as they are the older models that have a center cap in the cone. The newer capless models will have to have an upper brace cap glued to all of the cone's fingers and will have a rather ugly appearance. Leed wire overhauls usually run around $30.00 for the older models. Voice coil and spider overhauls run around $90.00.

It's surprising to see one fail after such a long time, but most likely either one of the tinsel leads (between the speaker terminals and the voice coil) has broken, or the voice coil itself has burned out. You should be able to see the tinsel leads; if one has broken away from the terminal you may be able to solder it back into place. If it's broken on the speaker cone side, it's unlikely that you'd be able to solder it without damaging the cone. A break in the voice coil won't be visible; to test for it, check for continuity between the two terminals. Unfortunately, it's probably going to be easier to replace the subs than repair them.