I was doing a little connection cleaning this afternoon. RCAs and speaker binding posts. What a difference in sound quality. Wow!

Anyway, when it was time to clean the posts on my speakers (XR 1052s), I discovered this mostly white substance that feels like putty, but with a bit more feel like rubber. And then some black rubbery stuff too. I nearly crapped myself in horror at the sight of it. How the hell does this speaker even produce sound? Does this look like normal speaker repair material to anyone? I would not know, having never dealt with any repairs before.

Two pictures are from the inflicted speaker and the one photo is of the other normal speaker, the way it should probably look when it came from the McIntosh factory.

There's a chance I can track down the original owner to ask him some questions, but that's going to take some time. Thought I would ask here first. Lot of knowledgeable people here!

Thanks.

-Mike

That white stuff looks like CPU thermal grease, IHMO.

It looks like a ham-fisted repair job. On the "good" speaker, you can see the leads come thru a grommet that has been filled with what looks like hot glue, to seal up the cabinet (otherwise there would be a whistling sound when the woofer was operating.) On the "bad" speaker, it looks like the leads (which may not be the original ones) were re-soldered to the binding posts (which also may not be the originals -- your "good" picture doesn't show the originals.) After the electrical repair, it looks like some white flexible caulk or similar material was packed around the hole to reseal it (bet you a dollar the grommet is missing too!)

It's not very workmanlike is it? But it looks like it'll do what it has to. If you do speak with the last owner, you should find out why the repair was necessary in the first place.

Looks like "fermunda" cheese.

Amway chewing gum. :yuck:

RTV (silicon rubber) used to seal the holes shut, don't know if original but very comonly used to seal leaks and stop rattles in speakers.

The soldering job on the binding posts looks sloppy and un-factorylike. As far as the white stuff, I can't tell if it's something like RTV or another kind of rubbery caulk like polysulfide.

Rope caulk maybe ?

I agree about the binding posts too...

Boy that sure looks nasty! Whoever did that needs to be held down and have some of that stuffed in their ear!!!!

Dont know, but if you touched it wash your hands and see a DR.