Welcome to Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

Project Gallery 1: Refoaming

JBL 125a refoaming. Before (at left) & during (at right)

This photo shows the JBL 125a finished (left) along with a finished Infinity IRS 1001 woofer

This photo shows the Infinity IRS 1001 5” woofer in mid-repair with new surrounds waiting to be installed.

Sometimes refoam jobs require special sizing of the foam to fit a unique or metric size woofer. The above photo is of a German made 5 inch diameter mid-woofer manufactured by Görlich. It came from a high end Swiss made speaker called the Ensemble Reference. This is a very special and unique speaker that was well worth salvaging for the customer.

Here is a close up of the seam resulting from cutting and butt splicing a foam surround of slightly larger size to fit the Görlich woofer. This process doesn’t always work depending on the size needs and what foam sizes are closest. There is a 50% upcharge for special size refoam jobs.

Project Gallery 2: Reconing

A severely damaged Polk Audio speaker voice coil can be seen on the left side in the above photo. On the right side is the complete recone replacement

The above photo shows the nearly finished Polk re-coning job. The new cone, spider and voice coil assembly are seen leaning against the frame.

This photo shows the magnet label on a pro-audio Eminence speaker. This driver
Is similar to the Kappa Pro Series. It has a cast aluminum basket and is rated at 500 Watts.

Reconing of pro-audio is another service offered by Carl’s Custom.

The above photo shows the same driver in the above photo that has
been reconed.

Project Gallery 3: Crossover Upgrades

This photo shows an upgrade to an AR-2ax speaker. Solen metallized propylene capacitors have replaced the factory installed ones. Also, the 15 ohm rheostats were beyond repair and were replaced by more robust industrial grade units.

Here is another AR2ax crossover upgrade. This photo shows the original,
disconnected unit which was eventually removed.

This photo shows an AR 3a crossover as originally made.
The tan rectangle is the 6 uF tweeter capacitor. The large
Block to the right is the 50/150 uF woofer capacitor.

This photo shows the new capacitors installed and wired
in the same cabinet as above.

This photo shows a completely rebuilt large Advent crossover. All parts are new
and temporarily attached to a cardboard sheet for the customer to install back
into their speaker cabinets.

This photo shows a partially upgraded large Advent crossover. New Solen caps
and a non-inductive resistor were installed in place of the older components.

Polk SRS 2.3 crossover upgrade (after – left) (before – right)

Polk SDA-SRS before (top) and after (bottom) high-end upgrade with Duelund resistors and foil Capacitors in the tweeter and midrange section along with Soniccraft and Solen caps in the midrange and bass sections.

Spica TC-50 upgraded crossover with new capacitors and 1 new air core coil.

AR LST upgraded crossover has a new Kimber Kap tweeter cap, Jantzen Midrange cap, new audio-grade non-inductive resistor and New NPE caps for the 2500 uF app. And bass section

KLH 5 before (left) and after (right) upgrade.

Project Gallery 4: High-end Crossover Upgrade

This photo shows the insides of a high end 2-way, Swiss made speaker called
the Ensemble Reference. This speaker warranted very high quality capacitors.
The yellow ones are Auracaps and the large black one is a Mundorf 1200V, 6.8 uF
Capacitor.

This photo shows a comparison of the original capacitors that came with the
Ensemble Reference speaker (ones marked with their measured values). Along
side them are replacement caps of equal value but of much higher quality.

Project Gallery 5: More Crossover Upgrades

The above picture shows an upgraded 3rd order crossover integrated with the original terminal cup plate used in a two-way Polk loudspeaker. New, 250V 12 microfarad metalized polypropylene capacitors are mounted on a small circuit board and bypassed by two, 400V 0.1 microfarad film/foil capacitors. Also shown is a new, 0.52 mH air-core inductor and new, 1 ohm, 12Watt non- inductive resistor peeking out from under the capacitors.

This photo shows a relatively more complex Snell Model A original 3-way crossover. Note the (A) bundled old style electrolytic capacitors and (B)sand-cast resistors.

This photo shows the same crossover that has been upgraded with (A) metalized polypropylene capacitors and (B) non-inductive resistors of equal measured values. Note, the unchanged, bundled electrolytic caps and sand cast resistors are components that were not in the critical signal path and were not upgraded. The new, capacitors are rated for much higher voltages which necessitates their relatively larger body size vs the electrolytic caps.