I just Finished restoring a set of 102s I picked up recently. In fact the outer gaskets are drying on the woofers as I type this. Information on the Avid line is somewhat scarce but I have a couple of threads
Here and
Here that may someday help someone looking for info.
I replaced the tweeters (someone had dropped in realistic tweeters in them) with the originals and changed out the mismatched
7uf caps with new dayton 6.8 film caps from PE.
The only markings on the Fuse in my 102s say they are Buss AGC3 250V
my guess is they were replaced at some point.
I ran into some difficulty locating new surrounds as one of the thread links show. The original surrounds were Butyl Rubber and were split in several locations. I ended up going with a Rubber surround kit from Midwest that is
listed for the JBL 56 118H 10". It was a bit tough to refoam these as the angle of the cone and the style of the rubber surround were not a perfect
fit, so the job wasn't the cleanest refoam Iv'e done. There were some wrinkles in the new surround inner lips that proved tough to get layed down
so I used more glue than I normally would.
Now for the Good ! I have heard a few nice speakers and even have a couple that some would call nice, but very few that I have ever heard
have sweeter mids than these. Despite the amount of time and money I spent to get these back to original condition wich ended up costing roughly
60 bucks plus the original 15 bucks at a GW, I am very pleased with the way they sound, as a matter of fact I still cant believe the mids sound this good considering the are a two way speaker. The tweeters sounded great also.
My final take on these little speakers is they put a smile on me and I got that rare astonishment I get when I hear something I really like. (That doesn't happen often) Some of that may wear off in time as I spend more time listening. But one thing is for sure, these are going to be listened too
alot at my house for some time to come !:thmbsp:
Below are a few pics of the 102s and there are a few more in the links I provided.
New Caps
New binding post (I hate Spring Clips)
New tweeters (originals) and new surrounds and dustcaps !
Hooked them up to the The Rack for a test run with some Sade spinning on the Revox. Right about (NOW) Im starting to smile, Female Vocals are fantastic on these little speakers. They imaged far better than I thought they would. I bet stands would really dial them in. Did I say I was smiling
about now ?
Well Im off to find a sweet little integrated to pair up with them so they dont end up sitting in the basement all alone with that big ole rack, getting picked
on by those 200 lb Infinity's.