[saulrh]

Works even if you're not in a college town. I once pulled a $4000 set of speakers out of my building's trash room - Boston Dynamics floor speakers, Polk Audio subwoofer - and I was just in a random apartment building in the bay area. Turned out the tweeter on one of the speakers needed replacing but that was like a $40 part on eBay and ten minutes of work with a screwdriver, didn't even need a soldering iron. You can get some crazy stuff if you're in the right building. Really sucks seeing it go to waste when it isn't something you can take, I always have to fight myself to leave some things behind.

[lostmsu]

> Turned out the tweeter on one of the speakers needed replacing

How much time it took to figure that out, and what is the chance the thing would turn out unsalvageable?

[saulrh]

I had those speakers for a few years before someone else noticed it, lol. The other tweeter worked just fine, and the speakers as a whole were so good that even without the dedicated hardware for higher frequencies it was still better in those ranges than what I'd been using.

I don't know how likely it'd be for something like that to turn out unsalvageable. I think that essentially everything at that level uses wooden enclosures, so it'd come down to whether the speaker bit is set into the wooden enclosure with screws or adhesive, and I don't know about the industry enough to know what the ratio is on that. Probably mostly screws. Then getting a compatible driver is probably guaranteed, at worst you have to replace both sides to keep them balanced.

[elzbardico]

Lots of defects in speakers are actually serviceable for a reasonable cost. For high-end speakers, I think it is worth trying.