Soft-dome tweeters are fragile. So while you might be tempted to take a vacuum cleaner or dusting cloth to them while you’re cleaning, that’s dangerous territory – and you’re more likely to end up doing more harm than good.
So, how do you clean or turn a pushed in tweeter out again? We asked our Customer Care Manager, Otto Jørgensen, for help:
“You can actually just leave any dust that isn’t blown off the tweeter when you play music,” he says. “But if you don’t like the way it looks, the best method is to blow gently at the tweeter. Any dust that isn’t blown off by the speakers themselves will have little to no impact on their sound, though.”
While it might seem odd to blow at your tweeters, it is by far the safest way to clean your soft-domes: compressed air or vacuum cleaners pack too much punch.
In some unfortunate cases (we’ve all seen the horrific pictures), tweeters get pushed in for a variety of reasons – small fingers being among the most common. The solution is low-tech and a little unorthodox, as Otto explains: “You have to suck it out. Place your lips tightly around the tweeter creating a vacuum. And then you use your mouth to create suction.
“Time is also a factor here. You need to start the rescue mission as quickly as possible. If the diaphragm is allowed to settle, it can become almost impossible to get out again,” he adds.
The tweeter might still have small creases, folds, or dimples after being rescued. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do about that. And sadly, these imperfections might have a slight negative effect on sound.
More severe problems will be more easily identified: “A forceful push could damage the voice coil. But, it will be a much more obvious problem, as the tweeter either won’t play or it’ll sound wholly unnatural. It’ll be very obvious,” Otto says.