RM30 Ribbon Replacement

familyfung · « **on:** 23 Oct 2013, 05:28 am »

A year or so ago, a visiting 6 year-old decided to do exactly the opposite of what I said, and he touched the ribbon on my 2009 (upgraded to series II in 2011) cherrywood RM30's, putting a visible dimple in it. Other than kicking myself for making something irresistible to a child by calling attention to it, I couldn't hear an audible effect.

Brian (RIP) told me that they were extremely delicate, but could easily be replaced. As I am considering selling and upgrading, I think it's time I see if I can fix the problem. So 2 questions:

1) What is the replacement part? I see this thread (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=83201.msg804589#msg804589) but am not sure if this is the same tweeter.
2) How do I go about replacing it? I see the Aurum Cantus instructions in the thread, but I have a hard, pebbled, plasticy surface over the tweeter area that I can't see how to remove.

Thanks for any suggestions!

-Denis

P.S. Brian made me a set of grill covers out of my old CDWG's by cutting out the centers and covering with grill cloth, which I highly recommend to others who upgraded to Series II and still have your old CDWG's.

John Casler · « **Reply #1 on:** 25 Oct 2013, 07:03 pm »

Hi Denis,

Yes the Parts Express ribbon replacement will work. I will say that I attempted to replace a couple, and found it extremely challenging and ended up using some of the FSTs we still have in stock.

But at less than $10 for a few repair ribbons it is worth trying.

Long Ear · « **Reply #2 on:** 25 Oct 2013, 08:55 pm »

The replacement for the ribbon tweeter diaphragm from Parts Express is a G2Si for the Aurum Cantus. I bought 5 of these a couple of years ago, the tricky part is aligning the ribbon so that it doesn't touch the sides. At the time I believe the replacement cost aprrox $5.OO
which is why I bought 5 at the time. Good luck

john1970 · « **Reply #3 on:** 25 Oct 2013, 09:26 pm »

Many years ago I owned RM40 speakers with the ribbon tweeters. I once tried to replace the ribbons, but it near impossible to do correctly. Eventually I ended up purchasing two new tweeters. My advice is leave them alone and sell at a lower price. Alternatively you could purchase two new tweeters for ~$200 and replace the units, but that seems not very pragmatic because the speakers are working and you are selling them.

Good luck,
John

Rocket · « **Reply #4 on:** 25 Oct 2013, 10:07 pm »

Hi,

Is the ribbon itself damaged or is it the faceplate of the RM30's? My speakers use an aurum cantus g2 ribbons and it has a mesh shield over the ribbon to protect it. I also had a pair of raven 1's which used to blow ribbons occasionally and they are quite tricky to replace and whilst they did sound okay when I replaced the ribbon they did not always look that good.

It might be simpler to replace the whole ribbon tweeter if it looks that bad. If it is only a minor cosmetic issue it might be better to just leave it.

Cheers Rod

familyfung · « **Reply #5 on:** 27 Oct 2013, 04:22 am »

Thanks for all the helpful responses. Sounds like Brian underestimated the degree of difficulty. That also happened to me when I upgraded to the Series II CDWG, as my attempts at following Brian's instructions were foiled when trying to remove the side plugs. Fortunately, as I was local to him, he got the upgrade done in his factory/warehouse for free.

@Rocket: It was purely the ribbon, which has a little dimple in it the size of a six-year-old's fingertip. When it happened, I made sure I couldn't hear or measure a difference between the tweeters.

In the end, I guess I'll adjust the price when I decided to post them for sale.

Thanks again!