At last years (2015) Merley Hamfest Rally I bought this Sharp WQ T282E from a friend and colleague, for just £2 after it had sat on our stall at that price for most of the day. I didn't anticipate that it would end up costing me about £25 and many hours spread over the last year to get it working as good as new.

The obvious, and quite visible problem was that the foam surrounds on the speakers had completely disintegrated.

Steve told me a history of the box which he had been given as faulty (due to duff capacitor in the graphic equaliser). He and family had used it for some time and had been impressed by the sound quality for the size, until the problem with the speakers appeared. He had tried a repair using some bath sponge to try and keep the cones centred which hadn't achieved much, and said that looking around car boot sales he hadn't seen any suitable replacement speakers.

My first thought was to replace the rotted foam surrounds with proper ones made for the job. Searching on Ebay I found some that looked to be the right size for about £5 from a Chinese vendor so ordered them. When they arrived they were a perfect fit so "all" I needed to do was glue them in.

That was quite difficult with the cone still held the speaker by the centre suspension. As the new surrounds were rubber I used Copydex rubber glue, trying to get it between the cone and the surround, and the surround and the basket but not all over the cone. Eventually I was happy with the way they looked so I fitted them back in the Sharp and tried them.

The sound was a big disappointment . If I turned the 100Hz slider on the Graphic Equaliser above about 3 any bass in the music was accompanied by farting noises. I'm not sure if the surround or edge of the cone was flapping around but something was very wrong.

Having tried to improve the situation with more glue which made no audible difference I decided to switch to Plan B and buy some new speakers. The Sharp speakers have a strange kink in the mounting presumably to allow longer screws to mount them but I figured that if I cut down the mounting posts any 4" car speakers should fit.

Having read good things about Alpine car speakers in various places including on stereo2go I bought a pair of them from Amazon for about £20.

Having got the speakers and tried to fit them a problem became apparent.

The sharp speakers had four supports in the frame with a gap at the top. The Alpines had three with one at the top where it would foul the circuit boards inside the top of the Sharp.

Looking more closely I realised that if I turned the Alpine speakers so the gap was at the top it would solve that problem. However that would mean cutting off the speakers mounting lugs (which have did helpful lines moulded into them to help you do that). The speakers came with bag of clips which could have been used to mount them either by adding packing or shortening the mounting posts, but at this point I had a better idea.

This was to use the outside of the basket from the old speakers to hold the new ones in place. Using a junior hacksaw I sawed off the lugs off the new speakers and the outside off the old speakers. These fitted nicely over the back of the new ones.

Testing everything to see if it would fit together I found something was still fouling the circuit boards causing about a 2mm gap when trying to close the case together. Luckily there was a ridge about 3mm high where the Sharp speaker mounted against the front of the boombox so using a diamond cutting disc in a cordless drill I cut that off. A Dremell would have probably done as easier neater job. This photo shows the job half done.

Everything then fitted so it was just a case of soldering on the speaker wires and screwing the box back together, which I eventually did 54 weeks after getting the Sharp.

(yet another picture that has decided to rotate itself in the post. Any idea why this happens ?) 

This time I pleased with the way it sounds even with the volume quite high. I can't compare it with the Sharp Speakers but various internet articles have been complementary about the WQ-T282E which uses 10 C cells to produce a decent power output, and has all the essentials like Line In

So that has been the last years boombox restoration project. At one point when I was working on it my girlfriend asked "Don't you think we have enough radios ?" My reply was that fixing this boombox was becoming personal. Having worked in the electronics industry for 38 years I wasn't going to let something as simple as changing the speakers in a boombox defeat me and eventually I managed it. 

I hope the speaker frame trick might be useful to someone else

Well that was a thoroughly enjoyable read with my morning cuppa so thank you. Looks like a labour of love in the end but it means another box saved and less waste of these precious throwbacks so that can only be a good thing.

Really enjoyable and glad she is up and running. I think the new speakers look pretty cool behind the grills to.

T-Ster posted:

Well that was a thoroughly enjoyable read with my morning cuppa so thank you. Looks like a labour of love in the end but it means another box saved and less waste of these precious throwbacks so that can only be a good thing.

Really enjoyable and glad she is up and running. I think the new speakers look pretty cool behind the grills to.

Thanks.

Googling WQ-T282, which is what I did when I first got the box brought up this post:

http://REPLACEMENT ERROR/topic...-nice-little-boombox

which I remember was the one that made me decide it was worth putting some effort into fixing the Sharp. It shows the influence these forums can have.

I also found a few Ebay posts for the same type of box with the same speaker problems. I guess Sharp had no idea how the foam would last over the next 25 years when they decided to use it. Lets hope the Alpines last at least as long. 

I think by looking at it that you have put the new foam on the wrong side of the cone..I could be wrong though

davebush posted:

I think by looking at it that you have put the new foam on the wrong side of the cone..I could be wrong though

Thanks for the comment Dave. When fitting the new surround I went by the way the speakers had been originally made. The speakers are quite small and with the new surround on top there would have been even less paper cone visible. I actually still have one of the old cones here so here are a couple of pictures showing this. The black ring on the back shows where the Sharp foam surround was glued to it.

Of course Sharp had the advantage that they could glue the surround to the cone before assembling the speaker and then they probably had some kind of jig and clamps to make sure everything was central. If you are making 10000 speakers you can afford to do this. 

 Another possibility was that the new rubber surround was too stiff compared to the foam one, although I didn't find any 4" foam ones. 

Has anyone had much success in repairing loudspeakers this way ? If so what glue and techniques did they use ?