A couple of years ago I heard the Boston Acoustics T830 towers at one of the AudioKarma forum meetups and remembered them as an easy listening and non-fatiguing speaker. They show up for sale once in a while but always far away from where I am. One of the pairs that was recently for sale had a new surrounds installed and all caps on the crossover replaced as well. The asking price was $175 but I wasn’t willing to spend 3 hours in the car to get them. A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing Craigslist and came across a pair of T830s right in my town. They were listed at $35 and description said that they need new surrounds. The seller wanted to meet at a public place but I have replied that I am not really interested since besides the woofers, each speaker has two other drivers that I would like to test. His reply was that I can have them for $25 in as is condition. Well, I took a chance. I have checked the cabs and they were ok. Woofers needed new surrounds but tweeter and mid-range drivers looked ok. I brought them home and ordered new compatible surrounds from Rick Cobb who is highly recommended on AudioKarma.
The surrounds came in a few days and in the meantime, I got the woofers ready. Stripping old foam was a breeze as the glue was still tacky so I could easily pull it off the metal basket. This wasn’t the case with the Boston’s A60 that I refoamed and currently use in the garage. The whole process of refoaming took three evenings. One to clean the old foam, another one to glue surrounds to the cone and third one to glue the surrounds to the frame. It is all installed now and I am currently connecting the speakers to my amp to test them. Updates on how they perform will follow.
Here is a couple of photos of the refoamed woofers.
