A few weeks ago I had a party at my house. A few people were interested in my home theater system so I was giving them the grand tour. They were really taken by the size of the Essence center channel speaker. I then removed the grill from the Essence to show them what was under the hood and to my surprise the center of the three woofers were pushed in. I was certain that my two year old had something to do with this. I called my father who is a bit more knowledgeable with speakers and he informed me that it would cause some sound degradation but that the human ear would most likely not notice it. I don't know how long the speaker was in this condition and I watch movies and listen to multi-channel music very often and I had not noticed anything.
I went to bed that night feeling ok about the situation and that it was most likely not really having a negative effect. I woke up the next morning and it was really bugging me. I had to try to fix this. I booted my laptop and googled the issue. There were many posts all over different forums suggesting using a shop vac to suck them out, one posting said to use a wooden dowel and a drop of glue from a hot glue gun on one end of the dowel and then allow the glue to dry while holding it to the center of the woofer. Other suggestions were to use a rapping paper cardboard tube to try and manually suck the center out, or to use a straw. I actually tried using my home vacuum cleaner with the attachment, a straw, and a cardboard tube. None of these solutions came close to pulling the center of the woofer out. I was about to give up when I decided to look in one of our storage closets to see if I could find anything that might work.
My eyes glanced over my wife’s breast pump and I thought to myself "no that wouldn't work, would it?" I opened the box and assembled it. It is one of the manual pumps. I placed the cone of the pump over the center of the woofer and pumped away. After about 5 pumps "pop" the center was as good as new. I was able to fix all three woofers.
