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The Fixers: Orange County Speaker helps audiophiles hang on to their cherished woofers and tweeters

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When the recession hit and consumers started looking for ways to spend less and hold on to their furniture and electronics longer, writer Ariel Swartley launched a new series for us. The Fixers profiles the artisans of home repair and keepers of not-yet-lost trades -- the folks can who tend rips in a cane chair, erase dents in silver teapots and, this week, breathe life into dead stereo speakers. Why go to the trouble of fixing 25-year-old stereo equipment when you could just buy something new? In profiling Orange County Speaker and the Sunda family who runs it, Swartley writes:

Most new speakers are designed for movie watching and video-game playing, not music listening. Home theater speakers, he says, ‘have a lot of sizzle in the high range and boom in the bass. But the voice range is in the middle.’ So is the piano’s. Without speakers arranged to concentrate on those mid-range frequencies, you miss a lot of melodic detail. ... Half of their customers are home music listeners with well-cared-for speakers beginning to show the inevitable deterioration of age. For some, the desire to repair rather than replace is driven by economics or environmental concerns. For others, the models have been part of their living room and listening experience so long, they’re like family.

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Keep reading and you’ll find out about the $29.95 mail-order kits that may allow you to fix a speaker yourself. For Swartley’s full story, click here.

-- Craig Nakano

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