# Cleaning Voice Coil Gap on Compression Drivers



## Ted J (Aug 15, 2006)

Have you guys ran into issues with having to take apart your compression drivers and clan the voice oil gap out with tape?

When I competed years ago with ID horns I had issues with some frequencies coming out harsh and just weird colored sound coming from the horns. Couldn't figured it out but got some tips from ID to take a part the compression driver and use tape and clean the debris out of the voice coil gap. There wasn't much in the gap to clean out but I did see some stuff come out. But the drivers back together again and boom, the drivers were so much smoother and the response issues went away.

Has anybody else ran into this or was it just me?


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

Dammit. .....where were you with this tape idea when I was cleaning the gap in my shallow front motored subwoofers......lol. I drilled above them, and the metal shavings bounced right past the exposed coils and into the magnetic gap........As you can imagine the sound I got when I fired it up was horrific. I did discover that a paperclip laying flat against the opposite side of the gap could overpower the hold of the magnet, and carefully remove the shavings.......but duh, tape would've been much easier! I'm just glad the motor was removable, to allow me access to the gap.


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## Ted J (Aug 15, 2006)

claydo said:


> Dammit. .....where were you with this tape idea when I was cleaning the gap in my shallow front motored subwoofers......lol. I drilled above them, and the metal shavings bounced right past the exposed coils and into the magnetic gap........As you can imagine the sound I got when I fired it up was horrific. I did discover that a paperclip laying flat against the opposite side of the gap could overpower the hold of the magnet, and carefully remove the shavings.......but duh, tape would've been much easier! I'm just glad the motor was removable, to allow me access to the gap.


Truth be told I got the tape tip from Image Dynamics at the time so credit goes to them.

Yeah, if the motor wasn't removable that would have really suck to try and clean out the VC gap for sure!


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## Eric Stevens (Dec 29, 2007)

The gap strength is so strong that they seemingly get debris out of thin air. This is normal and done in the pro sound world as well.


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## Ted J (Aug 15, 2006)

Eric Stevens said:


> The gap strength is so strong that they seemingly get debris out of thin air.


I noticed that they seem to find debris very easily!



Eric Stevens said:


> This is normal and done in the pro sound world as well.


Interesting, didn't know that but makes sense.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Interesting. On nearly every horn project I've had to chop up the baskets of the midrange drivers, to get them closer to the compression driver. And when I do that, there's always little bits of metal stuck on everything. So it stands to reason that it would wind up inside the compression driver too.

Those neodymium compression drivers I use are just stupid powerful too. On a whole 'nother level compared to the ferrite compression drivers that most use. If you get them too close to something metallic, they're drawn to it like a tractor beam.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

Yep. done this many many times. I use a business card or something similar and try and get the debris to all one location and then start using tape. seems to work better.
Aluminum tape is stiffer and stickier than painters tape and also worked better. But its an annoying and painstaking process to clean out the gap


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