Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Removing speaker grills

Maybe this is a dumb question but here goes.

Should the speaker grilles on my M22s come off easily? I was interested in taking them off to see how they sound and am wary of screwing up my new speakers? Do people use something like a screwdriver/awl to help pop the grilles off (I dont want to damage the finish on my new speakers) or am I simply being way too gentle in trying to remove them?

I just pull gently with my bare hands -- they come off easily enough.

they are supposed to come off. you just pull em off with your hands. they arent glued on or something. they have little tabs that slide into rubber inserts in the cabinet.

no worries!. dont use a screwdriver though because that could damage the finish.

you will be able to tell where the pegs are at, pull at those areas, along the sides.

they come off very easliy. pull on them like you are opening a draw.
do not worry about damaging them

You can see the grill holders in that pic... just to each side of the tweeter and the lower woofer, supporting them in these places will minimize chance of damage.

Remove your grills... let your drivers run free! :P

Bren R.

Sorry to jump in here without doing a search, but does removing the covers improve sound or is it for show? Should speaker grills be on or off?

If for sound, do you do this during listening only and put them back when done?

Aren't naked drivers a magnet for dust? I get sick amounts of this scourge from the furnace or AC. I would never expose my QS8 tops. Do you?

Also, I'm afraid to remove them with young kids in the house. The bottom line... Is it really worth it? Thanks & thanks to all for a great forum. Prost!

i believe it definetly makes a difference in sound. No matter how acoustically transparent the stuff is, its still covinering the drivers. I have never left mine on. For dust you can blow compressed air on the drivers from a safe distance if it bothers you. you probbly wouldnt notice anything from the top of a QS8 but you would with something like fronts. if youve got young kids though, it might be better to leave them on.

they arer really easy to take off so i would try it without grills. i try to leave my grills off, but my sister has 3 cats so i try to keep them on when i wont be using them for a while.
with kids i wouldnt take off the grils. a pencil jab into the cone of the driver wouldnt look very nice

Hi lutefisk, shroud,

If you check out the photo of the M22ti inside the anechoic chamber at the National Research Council in Ottawa (go to axiomaudio.com/archives) published with the Dec. 2002 Axiom AudioFile newsletter, you'll see it ready for measurement with its grille off. All of the Axiom speaker prototypes are designed for the smoothest and flattest linear response measured with the grilles off.

However, sometimes we run curves to see what interference effects and changes in frequency response occur, however slight, with the speaker grilles in place. If the grilles are well-designed (and Axiom grilles are), measurements reveal slight variations--usually 1 dB or less--in the very top octaves, around 15 kHz or higher, where the high-frequency output is ever so slightly less with the grilles left on.

As to whether these variations are aubible, if you use test signals such as broadband pink noise and instantaneous A/B comparisons, you can sometimes detect these slight variations in response, but I've not been able to reliably isolate these differences using music programming. If I were asked to categorize in a single word the effects of leaving the grille covers on or off with Axiom speakers, I'd say, "negligible."

That wasn't always the case. Grille design has improved over the past couple of decades but back in the 1970s, there were clearly measurable and audible differences in speaker frequency response with and without the grilles. Indeed, I used to publish anechoic frrequency-response curves with and without speaker grilles in place when I was editing audio/video magazines in the early 1980s.

Regards,

Thanks for all the responses everyone. Once I used a little effort, they came off quite readily with zero problems. Feel sort of silly now but oh well .

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That wasn't always the case. Grille design has improved over the past couple of decades but back in the 1970s, there were clearly measurable and audible differences in speaker frequency response with and without the grilles. Indeed, I used to publish anechoic frrequency-response curves with and without speaker grilles in place when I was editing audio/video magazines in the early 1980s.

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Alan, you aint kidding. We have some old Sansui SP-X8000 speakers with the lattice grills, those things are horrible. be better off facing the speakers twards the wall! Along with the grills, theres a nearly 1 inch lip around the front so that when the grills are in place they are flush with the cabinet, as you can imagine that really messes up the soundstage from what i can hear. But its ok because its not like they are high end speakers anyway. if all you need is something that can play music farily loudly and stuff they work great. 4 way 6 driver speaker!

Haoleb,

Hey, I remember those Sansui lattice grilles! LOL! And about 1970, JBL had a very popular L100 (L112?) 3-way "pro" monitor with a foam grille that looked like an inverted waffle iron. Available in orange or blue, if memory serves. . .

I thought it was very cool back then.

Regards,

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We have some old Sansui SP-X8000 speakers with the lattice grills, those things are horrible.

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Or the PA-style drivers that used to be in the arena here until the 80s, covered in expanded mesh - somedays I get nostalgic for that sound and set my EQ to _/\_

Speaking of PAs... if anyone's got a schematic for a Bogen C-60 Public Address amplifier, let me know? Their site has one for the C60C, but it's a much newer animal - IT has ICs!

Bren R.

Bren, apparently that schematic is lost in antiquity and even this outfit doesn't have it. You may have read this discussion.

I have read that discussion, John... thanks.

Spent some spare time with one of the EEs pumping a 2K tone into it and tracing through it with a scope - so far it's looking like the SCR or TRIAC that drops the voltage to 18V (the rest of the board runs off 55V from the transformer) is beefed. If I get some time tonight, going to swap it out. It's a hardly used piece of equipment, and the current arena is being demolished in a year anyway so it's not worth replacing with new. Maybe we'll just get them a megaphone.

Thanks for the attempt, though (and sorry for taking this off topic)
Bren R.