RCA 15 Inch DuoCone 515S2 Study In Resurrection

I was in a friends rather large shop full of antique cars, radios, and interesting things. Anyway I was there looking at some sort of car from 1916 when I noticed the back of an RCA driver hanging on the wall. I had inquired about it and thought it very interesting not knowing the next time I was by he would give it to me. Very nice. It was in rough shape and had tears in two places with part of the paper being weak. To start I asked around about the driver and Jeffery at Experience Music gave some good advice on how to repair the speaker. Another friend had some good advice but he waited until after I had finished the repair to give the advice. BTW thanks Stoney McStonerson. The advice was to use "cigarette" rolling papers to repair the tears in the speaker. I have since used it with great success on a University 6201.

I see a cap that needs replacing.

The clean tear repaired rather easily. The lower right looks uglier than it is and actually repaired rather well. I did the repair on the back of the driver which looked cleaner in my opinion.

This is the HF part of the driver. It is different from the 515S1 as the HF section appears to be a separate unit and not attached.

Here is an example of the cigaretter rolling paper repair. The paper was dipped in thinned Elmers glue and applied to a small tear. As you can see the paper dries translucent and worked really well.

Here is the driver playing Unnatural Habitat by The Greenhornes. This is a great track from the Broken Flowers soundtrack


I am looking for another RCA 515S2 so if you have one let me know. One slipped past me on ebay last week in a guitar cabinet for $125...Grrrr

This post originated at retro vintage modern hi-fi http://itishifi.blogspot.com