Geko, how old are your DBLs?
2006 I think?
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I hope they sound as good as they look? ATC did a really great job.
Some interesting stuff going on in the factory. They had a pair of speakers on a work bench that made my DBLâs look like stand-mounts! There was also a lot of active kit around. Looked like a lot of people are reducing box counts.
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@Willy
I have been off a bit lately. But yes, I have taken my muds to a chap, one of his kind, in Leipzig who does a lot of refurbishing of vintage speakers. Wasnât easy actually to get there 
but anyway he is a nice chap who seem to know what he is doing. The shop looks more some kind of a garage sale outlet but somehow itâs seems more trust worthy to me than sone kind of posh shop which lots of bling. He checked my mids also on a phase response and strongly recommended me to leave them untouched as they are. But, in principle he was very reassuring that in case they died he will be able and willing to refurbish them. So in case someone wants to step forward and be first with his mids to give them a face lift I am happy to provide more details âŚ
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@Charlie
The modified Scanspeak mids continue to improve by the day. Hopefully more to come. Obviously way ahead of the somewhat tired Naim OEM mids and so Iâd have no problem in being the guinea pig for getting those reconditioned. In their current state theyâre of little use.
That said it wonât be in the immediate future. For a supposedly retired person Iâm doing an awful lot of work at the moment, off to Lausanne again next week (I do make a pretence of complaint at this but the food there is much better than my cooking). The week after that itâs my birthday and I might just have some other upgrades currently in negotiation.
If you send me the contact details then (likely early next year) Iâll look into getting the ball rolling. I did look at the location with the thought of doing a trip, make a holiday of it, but as you noted Leipzig isnât exactly near anywhere.
Willy.
You should work on the human-octopus hybrid, which could become the âgo-toâ for tricky manual tasks around the home.
Do you suppose that it could manage to drive itself around? If so, it would beat the living cr*p out of yer average man-with-a-van local tradesperson.
Didnât someone already try that? I seem to recall something on TV about it a few years back. Had to get Spiderman in to sort out the mess.
Willy.
@Willy
I am not sure if I can post contact details here so maybe @Adam.Meredith can pass it on to you.
Kr Charlie
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Thank you - please keep us posted!
Amazing!
@Richard.Dane would you please forward my email address to @Charlie so he can forward details of the chap who can recone dbl mids.
Willy.
Perhaps a stupid question but can they recondition the mid/bass drive unit for SL2?
Itâs just 24199. Probably the production run. The print uses fixed width spacing so the thin â1â makes it look like a space. I expect the other mid is a very close number. Possibly even 24200 or 24198.
I think it was around June time that the bass units on my DBLâs went into literal meltdown. The foam surround on both of them decided that theyâd had enough of this life and spontaneously disintegrated.
This left me with two problems, what speakers to use and what to do about getting them repaired. Fortunately, ATC came to the rescue with the repair - although a wait of around four months was a bit of a faff!
Speakers were a bit easier to sort out. I had an old pair of Warfdale Diamonds and an even older pair (circa 1992) of Isobariks. With the help of my son the DBLâs were retired to the workshop and the Isobariks inserted - with the equivalent exertion of three nights at the gym!
This was the first time Iâd heard the Briks with a 500 (usually itâs 135âs) and I can confidently say the 500 works itâs magic well. Better than I remember them even in an active configuration.
Fast forward four months and the DBLâs are now back in service and sounding bloody wonderful. Iâd forgotten just how good DBLâs can be. Their ability to convey the emotion of music is simply staggering. Bass is now seismic and the slam from a drum kit physically hits you in the chest. I thought Bricks threw a wide image, boy was I wrong. The DBLâs are casting stuff outside the room boundaryâs, and my room is 10m wide! Anyone that likes a guitar rift will be blown away at how the DBLâs pulls this from the mix. Breathtaking!
Finally, can I thank the guys at Audio-T for their great support, their old boss (now retired) for his depth of knowledge on all things Naim, ATC for the re-foam and Jason (at Naim) for sorting out the odd - or should I say very odd - problems Iâve had.
And thanks to the forum. Itâs threads like these that keep the old stuff going!
A few pictures showing the rebuildâŚ
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Thanks, Iâm really happy with how they are now sounding.
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Nice! Find one more and you could have a really good surround sound system.
I must admit that Iâd been looking for a spare pair even if itâs just to experiment with the mids and treble units.
A friend of mine use to have JVâs old pair in Zebrano black. Lovely.
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Just discussing with my mate how best to approach his DBL mids and tweeter replacement. Initially we were trying to avoid any major cutting and possibly 3D printing a sort of spacer gasket in order to clear the concentric cuts around the unit. Then my son (whoâs a race engineer) suggested lightly machining the secondary lip off the rear of the speaker chassis as this will avoid contact with the speakerâs isolation system and will probably generate far less heat in the cast chassis components. It should end up doing the same thing as the gasket and be more like the original fixing.
This picture with screwdriver pointing to the raised secondary lip may helpâŚ
I think this is a good approach and will update on well how it goes. We do have a spare set of mids should things go wrong but fingers crossed itâll work and wonât compromise the isolation.
A further update on my own DBLâs, they now have around four weeks use with the new re-foamed bass drivers and they are sounding absolutely stunning.
I spent a couple hour of fine tuning last week and this has again elevated performance. I checked both speakers were absolutely level in both planes using a spirit level and laser. Then made sure that the four spikes on each speaker come in exact contact with my Naim chips with equal pressure on each. Fiddly but weâll worth the effort.
Speakers have approximately 1cm of toe-in and around seven feet apart (inside edge to inside edge)
I also cleaned the female banana connections, which were all pretty dirtyâŚ
As a reference I can say they sounded every bit as good as a little jazz session I attended a couple of days agoâŚ
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