EPI M50 Speaker teardown (lots of pics)

[nadams]

Okay, I finally got around to tearing down my pair of EPI M50 bookshelf speakers. Here come the pictures:

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0001.sized.jpg
Overall shot of the speakers. Notice how the tweeter mount overhangs the woofer a bit. Space problems?

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0002.sized.jpg
Tweeter removed. Notice first how there's a light circle where the tweeter once was. It appears that after they had them built, they would spray the face of the cabinet, either with spray paint or some other black substance. Also notice the low profile, square magnet on the tweeter. Kinda strange, but fits with the inverted-surround paper cone :confused:

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0003.sized.jpg
Profile shot of the tweeter magnet

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0004.sized.jpg
Profile shot of the woofer magnet... also a square magnet assembly.

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0007.sized.jpg
There's the crossover in all it's glory.

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0008.sized.jpg
Not gonna be easy to replace the posts in the back w/ nice binding posts.... nuts.

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0009.sized.jpg
Hmmmm.... sound deadening or fiberglass insulation.... felt like insulation to me. God I hope it's not asbestos :eek:

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/images/gallery/albums/epi/IMAG0013.sized.jpg
Here are the posts I need to replace. You can see that they're pretty beat up...

That concludes my tour through the EPI M50 bookshelf speakers. Any questions? No? I have one for you.... How can I replace those posts????

Thanks,

nadams

[mhardy6647]

The insulation is fiberglass, have no fear :-) Good to handle with gloves though, as some folks are sensitive to having the little needles of spun glass sticking into them.

The binding posts are easy to replace. Looks like they're riveted. Drill them out and replace with posts from Radio Shack, Partsexpress, or Madisound that'll physically fit. Maybe something like these: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=260-301

You probably know already that the EPI/Epicure speakers of Win Burhoe were very nice bargain speakers not unlike the early Polks of the same era. Indeed, many retailers (including Baltimore's own Soundscape) carried both lines, because both companies provided excellent sound for the money. EPI's strategy was to use a proprietary woofer and tweeter that were matched so that 1) the woofer could run full-range and 2) the tweeter required only a first order crossover (i.e., a capacitor... 6 dB/octave). The concave dome tweeters were quite good too. Only the earliest EPI products used rubber surrounds; later they used foam.

You probably also know that there is an on-line source of info and even parts for the EPI's at www.humanspeakers.com.

[nadams]

Was thinking about this post, found it, and found that all the links for the pictures were dead. So, I reuploaded the original shots and fixed the post.

You can thank me later for bumping this ancient post of mine!

[halenhoang]

Wow, reading this post felt like going back in time, somehow!