Advent Maestro Restoration

Here are some pictures of my Advent Maestros. Toasted Almond should get a kick out of this, since I bought them from him. Again, I put restoration in the title, but all I did was re-foam the woofers, replace the caps in the crossovers, and do some work on the cabinets. This pair were made in early July 1988, according the the stamp inside the cabinets.

Here are the woofers before refoaming :



Here are the cabinets. The Maestro's had this covering of foam on the baffle, and like the foam on the woofers, it goes all sticky and flaky. I tried using goof-off to remove the residue once all the old foam had been scraped off, but it was taking too long. Instead, I used a rubber wheel mounted in a drill, the kind used to remove vinyl decals and adhesive residue from cars. I bought mine from Eastwood, you can find a link here :

http://www.eastwood.com/vinyl-eraser-and-arbor.html



Here is a closeup of the drivers, including the re-foamed woofers



Here they are, put back together with the foam/adhesive residue removed. I might have to make another wooden trim piece to replace the missing one.



One thing that looks weird is the woofer trim rings don't sit all the way back. It looks like the woofers aren't screwed in all the way, but the frames are touching the cabinets. The original foam would have hidden this. I can either put the foam back, or make some rings from thin MDF or masonite to close this gap up.



So, how do they sound? Preliminary listening reveals a speaker that's pretty good at everything. I was expecting the bass to dominate, given the extra large cabinets and 10" woofer, but it's the treble that I first noticed, very detailed. I tried listening to some Jill Scott, and on particular track (Gettin' in the Way), the backing vocals really jumped out at me, I don't remember hearing them quite as apparent as before. Maybe it's the dome midrange these things have? I will have to get some sealing tape for the drivers, as there is nothing sealing them to the cabinets (bad news for a sealed enclosure design). At one point, I felt the tweeters, and I could feel the plates flexing as the pressure inside the cabinet was pushing on them.

Lee.

These are great sounding speakers, IMHO. I've had mine since new in '88 - '89. For some reason the foam on the front of mine hasn't disintegrated, although I know it's a problem for many. The woofer surrounds went south and I replaced them some years back; one of them is cracking and due for replacement again, but the other seems fine. Odd.

Nice

WOW, those cleaned up nice!

I had a set with body foam that was starting to get nasty.
Sold them off.
Missed them.
Found another set that have body foam that seems fine.


I've found that the set I have now likes a lot of power. The bigger the amp, the better. They do run treble/mid heavy until you have enough amp to get the woofers off their butts.

Wow!

You did a beautiful job with those. I bought a pair of Maestros in January that needed work. I re-foamed them and they sound awesome, still need to make sure the cabinets are sealed and to get rid of the black paint someone put on them. The only problem is that occasionally they are strong in the midrange.

Rather than scrape off the body foam, I'm attempting to replace it, I just have no idea how I'm going to go about that. :scratch2:

boojum said:

These are great sounding speakers, IMHO. I've had mine since new in '88 - '89. For some reason the foam on the front of mine hasn't disintegrated, although I know it's a problem for many. The woofer surrounds went south and I replaced them some years back; one of them is cracking and due for replacement again, but the other seems fine. Odd.

Click to expand...

The woofers are identical to the Legacy woofers as far as I can see. This ought help if you (or anyone else) should ever need another woofer.

charlie2951 said:

You did a beautiful job with those. I bought a pair of Maestros in January that needed work. I re-foamed them and they sound awesome, still need to make sure the cabinets are sealed and to get rid of the black paint someone put on them. The only problem is that occasionally they are strong in the midrange.

Rather than scrape off the body foam, I'm attempting to replace it, I just have no idea how I'm going to go about that. :scratch2:

Click to expand...

Thank you. In order to replace the foam, you'll have to remove the old stuff, unless you can get the residue scraped off totally flat. I did think about removing the trim pieces and veneering them.

Lee.

leesonic said:

So, how do they sound? Preliminary listening reveals a speaker that's pretty good at everything. I was expecting the bass to dominate, given the extra large cabinets and 10" woofer, but it's the treble that I first noticed, very detailed. I tried listening to some Jill Scott, and on particular track (Gettin' in the Way), the backing vocals really jumped out at me, I don't remember hearing them quite as apparent as before. Maybe it's the dome midrange these things have? I will have to get some sealing tape for the drivers, as there is nothing sealing them to the cabinets (bad news for a sealed enclosure design). At one point, I felt the tweeters, and I could feel the plates flexing as the pressure inside the cabinet was pushing on them.

Lee.

Click to expand...

The bass is much improved since I sealed the woofers with Parts Express sealing tape. I did the tweeters also, being sure to cut the tape lengthways so the fragile tweeter frame wouldn't have to squash the full width of tape. The midranges are in their own sealed enclosure.

Lee.

Very nice job! Have you tried duplicating the bottom trim?

This was a great write-up.

Since posted, has anyone found a good replacement for the body-foam on these speakers?

Thanks!

Olivesaxer said:

This was a great write-up.

Since posted, has anyone found a good replacement for the body-foam on these speakers?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I've heard auto headlining material can work, I preferred the bare baffle look though.

Lee.

Great job! Aren't these projects fun? Especially when you get to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Hey everyone. First post on here, but have been lurking for awhile researching and what not.

For those of you have a dented mids that are not cracked/split I tried some high quality duct tape (oxymoron?) on mine tonight. After several attempts I was able to pull the dent out and it is looking much better. I lightly pressed the tape into the dent waited a minute or two and then slow pulled. Worked like a charm! I also ordered some foam for the woofers and plan to replace those this weekend ($22 with shipping off ebay, found a reliable seller with quality replacements from another post on here).

These are great speakers for $100 or less if you can find them in decent shape. The pair I have were given to me by my father who purchased them new in the late 80's. I want to say he paid about $600-700 for them back then.

I still plan to sand out a couple of beverage rings and blemishes and refinish them in the near future. Thank you to everyone's input on methods, materials, etc. You guys are a HUGE help on these projects and make us first time DIY types feel more comfortable knowing others have had success.

Fixed dead picture links.