Repairing a boom box

[CroneA]

Backstory: My parents have kept an old, unused stereo in my former room for YEARS. It's only got radio, a tape deck and a CD player, approaching 20 years old.... At some point one or both of the speakers started going bad. Though I have fond memories of playing Pokemon CDs on this thing, a bad speaker is a bad speaker. So I say to them, "hey this old piece of junk has been just sitting here gathering dust, I'll get rid of it for you" and they're like "Nooooooooo we paid so much money for that thing we gotta keep it foreverrrrrr" So the last time I traveled to visit I took it home with me to "repair" though I suspect this is a huge waste of time and the gas money spent hauling an extra 10 pounds of uselessness.

But I do have to build my engineering cred, so I'll stop being such a pessimist and actually weigh my options:

• I could try to diagnose and repair/replace the amplifier or whatever's wrong with it...
  
• I could disable the bad speaker and try to output a mono signal through the one good speaker...
• I could discreetly recycle it and just hope they forget, lol

So my question is: Is there a good hardware trouble shooting list for speakers I could follow? Can I diagnose the problem just by listening to the speaker output?
This is my first time really tackling electronics repair, so any advice would be appreciated!

 

[debe]

First thing I would do is remove the speaker & check the condition of the cone, its usualy a type of paper & the outside edge can be a rubber material that can disintegrate over that time & cause poor sound.

 

[CroneA]

ah, that sounds like a good idea, thank you!

 

[rumpfy]

AND,
tell us all what is the ;

manufacturers name,
model,
size of speaker (diameter),
voice coil impedance,
weight. (this tells me a LOT about the size of the magnet)
frame construction (whether a pressed steel or a diecast frame)
A photo if possible, of the back side AND the front side.

 

[dr pepper]

If your not right bothered about an exact replacement you'll probably be able to replace the suspect speaker drivers, a lot of electronics distributors stock general purpose ones, it might not sound quite the same but it'll work.
Or you could buy some speakers s/h with similar drivers in them and do transplant.
Try the stereo on some (cheap) speakers first to tell if its the speakers or the amp, the amp is probably a monolithic chip type afair, shouldnt be hard to find they'll be screwed to a heatsink in the back.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

1st things first. Is it the speaker or the amp? Swap speakers.

You may want to replace speakers in pairs. Speakers deteriorate in a few ways. The "surround" breaks. That' the area around the diameter that does all of the flexing. The paper element deteriorates. The voice coil overheats and it scratches or doesn't work at all. Speakers can be re-coned.

 

[1otherguy]

Backstory: My parents have kept an old, unused stereo in my former room for YEARS. It's only got radio, a tape deck and a CD player, approaching 20 years old.... At some point one or both of the speakers started going bad. Though I have fond memories of playing Pokemon CDs on this thing, a bad speaker is a bad speaker. So I say to them, "hey this old piece of junk has been just sitting here gathering dust, I'll get rid of it for you" and they're like "Nooooooooo we paid so much money for that thing we gotta keep it foreverrrrrr" So the last time I traveled to visit I took it home with me to "repair" though I suspect this is a huge waste of time and the gas money spent hauling an extra 10 pounds of uselessness.

But I do have to build my engineering cred, so I'll stop being such a pessimist and actually weigh my options:

• I could try to diagnose and repair/replace the amplifier or whatever's wrong with it...
  
• I could disable the bad speaker and try to output a mono signal through the one good speaker...
• I could discreetly recycle it and just hope they forget, lol

So my question is: Is there a good hardware trouble shooting list for speakers I could follow? Can I diagnose the problem just by listening to the speaker output?
This is my first time really tackling electronics repair, so any advice would be appreciated!

If it weighs 10 pounds, I'd definitely try to repair it.
Sometimes, you cannot beat those old, heavy, electronics.

First thing is.......what does it sound like right now?
Do all the lights work?

 

[shimniok]

And while you're at it, if it's crackly sound related to turning knobs or pressing buttons, time to lookup Deoxit on Audiokarma.org. Even if the whole thing weighs 3 ounces it might still be fun to repair which may lead to a whole career / life of electronics. Cool.

 

[Doug McCarter]

Hi,
I have one of those cassettes with a cord to play MP3s thru my old boom box. The problem is electrical noise in the signal and the motor drive makes noise.
I thought I could bypass the play head and wire the stereo mini lead directly to the leads from the payback head, but I get about a half second of music and than silence.
Am I barking up the wrong tree?

 

[Scotophor]

Doug, please start a new topic as your post seems to have nothing to do with the original topic of this thread.