Equipment - Age effects??

[MarkG]

Hey All,

Had some Infinity Kappa 6.5 3-ways (with the wonderful EMIT ribbon tweets!) laying around from many years back, been thinking about putting them in the wifes car for some time. She could care less about quality sound, but it's torture for me when we head out in her car. Well, today I decided to do something about that and throw them in. Nope, not happening!! The surrounds appeared fine, but when I touched them they basically turned to mush under my finger pressure. Yep, not a happy boy! Got me thinking though, so I thought I'd throw some question out at you guys.

1) What is a normal life span for speakers? Ones which are not driven to extremes, but simply used the way they are ment to be.
2) How do you recommend speakers be stored?
3) How about amps? I have a Soundstream reference 405s which I just pulled out of my last car, and a very "old-school" Soundstrean mono D-200 (not used for years) which I am now concerned about. Do amps degrade when in storage? Any special storage conditions I should be aware of?

Any answers/comments/suggestions welcome. Might wind up saving me, and everybody else, some classic equipment in the process.

Thanks!

[nadams]

The reason your surrounds disintegrated when you touched them is because they're foam surrounds, which deteriorate with time. You will not have that problem with rubber surrounds found on all Polk speakers.

[MacLeod]

Yup. Rubber surrounds last a lot longer.

Amps could last virtually forever provided theyre kept out of the elements and honestly, there is no reason speakers couldnt last just as long. My dad has several speakers in his house that are 40+ years old and still work fine. Bought em back in the early 60's when Jensen was the shit!

[neomagus00]

and as far as amps go, they should be completely fine

[1996blackmax]

I was bumping with Jensen amps back in the day :).


The amps should be fine.

[Red230SX]

Anything has a finite life span and nothing will last forver. Solid State electronics
if stored in good condition in a good environment should last 30 or so years
without incident. The main time related failure in an amplifier would be the
on board capacitors. A capacitor is essentially a fast response battery, they
use carbon, foil and acid very similar to any other battery and due to that fact
they can and will decay over decades.

Most hard core vintage guys will tell you on audio equipment that's 40+ years
of age that all the capacitors should be replaced. The rest of the circuitry
which consists of Resistors, Diodes, Relays and Fet's should last indefinatly
as long as they are not exposed to conditions outside their respective realm
of tolerance EG: + 200 Degrees -10 Degrees or so..

Speakers can also last a life time but they do require care. Foam surround
speakers have come a long way "technologically" where the foams used today
have built in UV Inhibators, built in antifungal solutions etc. Foam from 10
years ago didn't have as much protection from the elements that cause the
foam to break down. That doesn't stop people from rebuilding a good foam
surround speaker, just talk to old Acoustic Research owners who will go to
the Nth degree to rebuild the drivers used in the old AR9's and such.

Also remember that high humidity is the enemy of anything electronic. You
do not want to store speakers in high humidity becuse it can cause rust and
oxidization of the voice coil and voice coil formers, it can cause pulp or hemp
based cones to warp and deteriorate, cause foam surrounds to crumble and
cause glues used to flake.

[MarkG]

Thanks for the info everyone. Much appreciated! Guess I'll be handing down my amps to the grand kids as family heirlooms.