Help me fix my Gale 3040 speaker that fell over...

richieboy

richieboy

richieboy

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It's a sad day for me, I've had these Gale 3040 speakers for about 20 years and today one fell over and stopped working.

I've opened it up hoping it was just a dislodged wire but it's cracked the PCB inside... photos:



Can I somehow fix this? I googled around for the numbers to see if I can maybe find a replacement but didn't have much luck. I know my way around a soldering iron so can do that bit but don't think I can repair PCB...am I doomed to silence from this speaker forever more?

Thanks for any help ..
 
That PCB looks to be the crossover, which has the job of splitting your speaker cable input into high and low frequencies for each of your speaker cones.

Looking at a pair of 3040s on ebay, they look bi-wireable, which means you could maybe bypass the crossover.
Or you could contact the manufacture for a new crossover - or at least get them to tell you what specs you need for one as a replacement. Try https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/gbr/en/contact
Or buy one on ebay and canibalize it for parts...
Or someone more skilled than I may say how to repair the board you currently have, although desoldering all the bits off it onto a new board sounds like a ballache to me.
 
Thanks for you reply, as far as I understand bi-wiring each speaker is currently wired to the amp using a ribbon type cable with four wires split between high and low frequency...how would I bypass the crossover?

Is the crossover the bit I've got a ruddy big crack going through? I tried the Gale website which listed an email address which is undeliverable, the website says 2005 on it so makes sense! You mentioned Cambridge Audio, did they take over Gale or something?
 
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Depends how much effort you want to put in.
It's a super simple circuit, the board is mostly there to keep the parts together.

1) Just solder the damaged parts of the PCB together along the cracks, run additional links if needed. You many need to compensate the mounting to avoid damage.... and make sure it doesn't fall over again. Could later fail again due to fatigue.

2) Order some single sided copper etch board, draw the current track gaps on it and use a Dremel with a small round grinder to recreate making sure you get a good gap then drill holes in roughly the correct place and move the comps. Take lots of photos so you know were everything goes. Doesn't need to be perfect, just electrically correct.

3) Cable tie the large components to a piece of thinnish plastic / plywood, then manually wire the component leads together with some spare speaker wire and solder

4) Design a replacement PCB and have it made by something like JLPCB (make sure you set the cheap shipping) and then swap the comps over.

I'd probably go for 3 as it would get it working cheapest... though 4 would be most satisfying (and time consuming)
 
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Thanks chaps, I'm going to give re wiring a go without a PCB as above (thanks decto, it's worth a go!), and if I fail miserably I'll be most likely replacing them.
 
richieboy said:
Thanks for you reply, as far as I understand bi-wiring each speaker is currently wired to the amp using a ribbon type cable with four wires split between high and low frequency...how would I bypass the crossover?

Is the crossover the bit I've got a ruddy big crack going through? I tried the Gale website which listed an email address which is undeliverable, the website says 2005 on it so makes sense! You mentioned Cambridge Audio, did they take over Gale or something?
Click to expand...

I think Richer Sounds, Gale, Cambridge Audio are part of a group, or at least have very close ties to each other. It's worth asking, even if they say "Sorry, we divorced from that company in 2011"

If you're using 2 pairs of wire to each speaker, then thats bi-wiring, but what happens inside the speaker is what counts, and if you've got no sound, I suspect its still got to travel via that board to the speaker cones.
Bi-wiring used to be a sales point more than an actual real benefit unless you had high end kit and high end ears in a high end listening room :)
 
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