How do you wear in or "age" a speaker?

[OlinMusic]

Are there any good ways to age or wear in speakers without merely logging thousands of hours at gigs?

[Christobevii3]

Re: How do you wear in or "age" a speaker?

I've known people with car audio stuff for doing sound quality work to let a speaker go at a mild volume in a room with like white noise running for a few days.

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: How do you wear in or "age" a speaker?

It doesn't take anywhere near a thousand hours to break in a speaker...Weber speakers are just about the longest break in time of any speakers I have ever used and afer about 60-80 hours of play those really start to open up and get broken in good. I have heard that hemp cone speakers take over 100 hours but I have yet to try any hemp cones.

As for another way to do it...put the speakers in an amp, and rig up a CD player or radio to play through the amp...find some music and walk away for a while...FWIW, I use music with a lot of bottom end...that really gets the speaker moving and starts the break in process. If you are gonna use Greenbacks, G12H30's or Vintage 30's just order the Helltones from Dave at avatar...they come already broken in and if you are gonna use Webers, just order them pre broken in!

There are a few other ways to do it but they are not as easy and can cause problems if done wrong...

[V!N]

Re: How do you wear in or "age" a speaker?

Both a Celestion tech and a professional cabmaker advised to break in a new speaker by playing clean chords on a fairly loud level for about 15 minutes.

[Baltar]

Re: How do you wear in or "age" a speaker?

it will wear in faster during abuse ...
eg a guitar speaker is not built for bass applications, but if you are
careful and take care about cone replacement (and not hitting the
pole plate with the voice coil) you can plug your cab to the stereo
and play music with it
but don't do this if you don't know what your are doing, to strong
bass load can kill your precious guitar speaker in a minute or less.
if you moderately use it like this for two days or so (depending on
the speaker) it will break in

[ericmeyer4]

Re: How do you wear in or "age" a speaker?

Easiest way, bust out your guitar and play!