What to do with my 1984 Monitor 7B

lmacmil

Pretty sure I bought my Monitor 7Bs in 1984 (could have been '82, hard to remember that far back.) I've never done anything to them nor have they ever been abused. As far as my 71 year old ears can tell, they still sound fine. The music I play is about 40% each rock and classical and 20% jazz. I'm just wondering what may have deteriorated over the last 36 years besides my hearing! Probably been 5-10 years since I last pulled the grills off and I didn't see anything amiss then. Is there anything I can or should do to "refresh" them? Or should I just leave well enough alone since I can't hear any obvious audible deterioration?

FestYboy

The caps in the crossover and (given their approximate build date) tweeter are the 2 main items holding them back at this point. The caps have long since past their prime, and there are better tweeter options now.

Gardenstater

Check to make sure the magnets haven't shifted on the midbass drivers. Another thing that can happen is that the spiders can crack and it's hard to see the crack but will show up as a distortion, especially with difficult bass materials.

You want to manually exercise the cones by pushing gently on the dust caps, in the center, and at all 4 quadrants, and carefully see if you can detect any sort of scraping sounds of the voice coil against the pole piece.

pitdogg2

Gardenstater wrote: »

You want to manually exercise the cones by pushing gently on the dust caps, in the center

place you fingers around the dustcap approx north, south, east and west. Not directly in the middle of the dust cap.

Sorry George I knew what you meant but we cannot expect others to NOT take it literately

Gardenstater

Yeah my bad. I didn't mean *in the center* because it is very fragile there, I meant to say with your fingers exerting even pressure around the edges of the dustcap. Thanks!