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This is possibly the coolest music video ever made!
The outgoing Commander of the ISS singing "Space Oddity". In space.
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This is possibly the coolest music video ever made!
The outgoing Commander of the ISS singing "Space Oddity". In space.
Q: How do I get them? Q: Do you have parts to repair my Genesis speakers? Q: How do I get them? Q: How long will delivery take?
Q: What if I never send the old parts back? Q: Now I feel guilty, I bought two woofers many years ago and never sent the cores back. I think they are in the basement though. Is forgiveness still possible?
Q: Are these new parts? Refurbished? New old stock? Q: You seem to be very proud of your tweeter. Is it really an improvement?
Q: How do I remove the grill from the front of my EPI speakers built in the early 70's? Quality and Value
Q: Is their sound quality really adequate to todays technical standards? Q: Now that I know that I can buy replacement drivers from you, I've decided to make the Genesis 20's my main home theater speakers. How do I go about magnetically shielding them? Q: How much do you think my speakers are worth? Personal
Q: What kind of music do you listen to? What's your favorite band? (etc.) Q: What is your privacy policy? A: Simply put, I do not use any information for any purpose other than that for which it is provided. For more details, go here. Q: How come your web site looks so boring? A: I have been adding more and more information to this site over the years, in the form of text, photographs and other illustrations. I trust and respect that you know how to read, and that any graphic presentations I provide will be interesting enough to be worth the time to download them. I try to make it so you do not have to load any graphics unless you specifically ask for them. I think that content matters far more than splashy layouts or gratuitous animations of any sort. At first that may seem boring; but as you begin to realize how much good information is here at your fingertips, I think you will like the way I have done it. PS, I changed the unvisited link color to a rather bright purple in February of 2002 - I hope that jazzes things up for you! Services AvailableQ: Do you have parts to repair my EPI/epicure speakers? A: Yes! I build exact replacements for many of the "drivers" or speaker elements used in these wonderful speakers. Some parts which I cannot build from scratch I am capable of rebuilding on your chassis to perform just like new again. I can also repair, rebuild or replace many of the crossover networks. I do not, however, have grilles for these products. Q: How do I get them? A: It's easy! If you know your speaker model you can go straight to the order form and either submit it on line or send it in with your old parts. Q: Do you have parts to repair my Genesis speakers? A: Yes! I build exact replacements for many of the "drivers" or speaker elements used in these wonderful speakers. Some parts which I cannot build from scratch I am capable of rebuilding on your chassis to perform just like new again. I can also repair, rebuild or replace many of the crossover networks. I do not, however, have grilles for these products, except for a small number for one or two models. Q: How do I get them? A: It's easy! If you know your speaker model you can go straight to the order form and either submit it on line or send it in with your old parts. Q: How long will delivery take? A: Since delivery time varies with sales volume somewhat, and my backlog of orders ("things to build and ship") can also change from time to time, I refer you to the delivery time file, so I only have to change this information in one place. Core Charges Q: What the heck is a "core charge"? A: A "core charge" is a refundable deposit, against the return of your old speaker part. It is only an issue when your new parts indicate a price "with the trade in of the old part" and it is possible for me to send the new ones out before receiving the old ones back. Q: What if I never send the old parts back? A: Then you never get the core charges back. I don't send a posse out to get the cores - but you also aren't doing your part for recycling! Q: Now I feel guilty, I bought two woofers four years ago and never sent the cores back. I think they are in the basement though. Is forgiveness still possible? A: You can send the cores back at any time. I have received cores as late as five years after the order was shipped. I will get out the old records and refund whatever core charge was assessed on the parts I get back. The important thing for me to put the paperwork together is the name the parts were ordered under - although the date and invoice number certainly make my life easier!
Product Information
Q: My original woofers rotted away around the edge - will the ones you make do the same? A: Eventually, yes. Since I use exactly the same materials as the originals, in order to make them sound exactly the same, they will someday begin to suffer the same fate. By the way, the typical lifetime of this foam seems to be from 10 to 20 years.
Q: Are these new parts? Refurbished? New old stock? A: Most of the parts I ship out as replacements are technically "remanufactured". What this means is that I am recycling the chassis that people have sent me back, by stripping them down to the metal parts, and then building them back up with all new parts. A percentage of the units I supply are built on new chassis, to make up for the ones I never get back and the ones that are unusable.
Q: You seem to be very proud of your tweeter. Is it really an improvement? Yes. While it maintains the original "feel" of the original concave dome, its extended frequency response and lower distortion make it a bit sweeter, and contribute to more of what they call "air" in the high end sound. I don't usually push them aggressively when people are replacing their woofers since they are already spending a bunch of money to fix their speakers. I figure they can always upgrade their tweeters later. Grills Q: The front covers on my speakers are damaged, can you help me? A: There are a few things that you might mean by that, with different answers. If the frames of your grills are broken, this will be the hardest thing to fix. I have a very small quantity (2 or 3 of a couple of models) of original Genesis grills, for speakers other than those new frames would have to be made, and this is best done locally by someone with good woodworking skills. Trying to do it at a distance would create a lot of problems. If the cloth is simply torn or discolored, it can be replaced fairly easily, and while I can do this most people decide that they will do it themselves. I have described the process in the DIY section, and there are also pictures of me doing a grill. If you do not want to do this yourself I can do it for you, for most grills I will charge each. Shipping is very risky, however, as they are rather fragile and awkward and if they are lost or damaged there is no easy way to replace them. Therefore I try to discourage people from asking me to do this via mail order. Q: How do I remove the grill from the front of my EPI speakers built in the early 70's? I've tried prying a bit but can't seem to get anywhere without damaging the wood. Will I have to cut the material off and the replace it with something different than what is currently on the speaker? A: Tough one. A lot of the earliest EPI speakers were not built to be opened up easily. The 50 is even worse, since working the grill off the cabinet might crack the grill frame (not a catastrophe but inconvenient) because it is very thin in places. The grills are held in place with several "globs" of old hot melt adhesive, which is not particularly strong, luckily. Some of the grills also have some small panelling nails holding them on (my 1000's had dozens per panel...). These nails will usually stay embedded in the wood of the cabinet and the heads will pull harmlessly through the grille frame - just be sure to pull the nail out of the box before trying to reattach the grill. So here is the trick: lay the speaker on its back. Then drive a coarse threaded screw into the grill just far enough that it does not also penetrate the cabinet. Choose a location where the grill is strongest - far from the cutout for the drivers, and an inch or two from a corner. Now grip the screw head firmly with a pair of pliers and pull as if you mean it. This usually breaks most of the glue patches and pulls out some of the nails (or leaves them behind). From here it is easy to finish removing the rest of the panel. Remove the nailos that stayed in the grill and hammer the ones that stayed in the cabinet flush. Once you get them off, though, the speaker parts will be competely visible and easy to work with. Even in the worst case, that is, ruining the grilles, you can always make new ones out of masonite, using the old ones as templates. Cover them with cloth you find attractive and attach them with Velcro this time. Quality and Value Q: Are these twenty year old speakers really worth repairing? A: You can figure this out yourself, I think - your judgement is what really counts here anyway. You have had these speakers around for all these years, enjoying music, as your tastes have changed and the speakers still bring it home alive, and you have never tired of them. Finally something is wrong with them - and you are investigating repairing them. Maybe you just hate to throw anything away, but these speakers have been your faithful listening companions and never let you down. They are not obsolete (whatever an eager young sales clerk may try to tell you) and the cost of repairing them is quite a bit less than you paid for them. In fact, if you have been out shopping for speakers, you may have had trouble finding products that sound as good as the old EPI or Genesis speakers at any price. Q: Is their sound quality really adequate to todays technical standards? A: Actually, I would contend that the sound quality of just about all the older Genesis and EPI speakers that I build parts for set a standard of sound quality that most modern equipment fails to meet! So there. They were designed and built to reproduce all the audible frequencies with a wide dynamic range from loud to soft (these two factors are what "digital ready" supposedly means), without emphasizing or distorting any of the tones in that range. So you hear whatever goes into them, unaltered, clean and pure. This will always be the technical standard to which audio gear must aspire. Q: Now that I know that I can buy replacement drivers from you, I've decided to make the Genesis 20's my main home theater speakers. How do I go about magnetically shielding them? A: I wouldn't worry about it. With most speakers it is almost impossible to get the woofer and tweeter magnets close enough to a TV screen to cause any video distortion. Once they are a foot away you will see no interference at all. You can actually experiment with this - if you do see some color distortion when the speakers are very close to the TV, moving them a couple of inches away should fix it. This will not hurt the TV - if the color distortions remain, just turn it off and on again and its degaussing circuitry will remove the residual magnetism. Q: How much do you think my speakers are worth? There is no real answer to this question, though it is becoming easier to answer with the advent of internet auction sites. My traditional answer has always been, "from each to whatever you can find someone to pay". This is because you do see some wonderful old speakers, in perfect condition, being sold at yard sales for almost nothing. At the same time, somewhere out there is a person who always wanted to own a pair and for some reason doesn't have them. What will they pay for them? Maybe a lot, but you have to locate the person first. That is where the auction sites help. A lot of strange junk (or treasure...) has been relocated from a former owners basement or attic to a new owners "pride of place" in their living room, curio cupboard, or what-have-you. There are two ways to "value" a material object like your old speakers. One is to sell them. They are "worth" whatever you get paid. The auction sites at least have made it likely that this will reflect the actual market demand for them. The other "value" is what they are worth to you, playing music for you at home. To me, especially with such great old classic speakers as Genesis and EPI (and a few other New England manufacturers), that is the most important value. While a simple repair from time to time, or a good polishing, may be necessary, it is hard to find anything that sounds as good as these speakers out there for a reasonable price, if it can be found at all. For insurance purposes we encounter two sets of data that matter, I think. One is the original sales or purchase price. There is a separate file for Genesis original prices and the EPI speakers list the MSRP in the files for each model. These have all the data I have been able to accumulate. The other insurance value that matters in replacement cost. This is a lot more variable. I build speakers that resemble certain of the old models very closely - so their current new price provides a benchmark for replacement value. Otherwise, you have to go out and find a speaker of similar configuration and quality and hope your insurance company agrees! If you are trying to establish value for an insurance claim I have two things to say. One is, I am sorry for your loss. The other is that if you need to copy or print any of the files on this site for your insurance company, feel free to do so. Personal Questions Q: What equipment do you listen to at home (and at work)? Q: What kind of music do you listen to? What's your favorite band? (etc.) A: Now we are getting really personal - check here! * * *
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