Let's talk about car audio speakers

Ive had several cars and I have never had to replace any speakers, unless I wanted too

Everything mechanical or electrical will eventually fail but the quality (not always the most expensive) products generally last longer.

With speakers look for things like pressed rubber cone surrounds instead of the cheaper injected foam. It’s no guarantee and both will work but if the manufacturer thought it was important enough to spend a few extra cents on a small detail like this, the rest of the product that you can’t see will probably be as well made.

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Speaker surrounds falling apart is nothing new. Especially in a moist environment. My rear speakers in my home theater are about 40 years old. I’ve had to replace the surrounds once so far, and will probably again.

I know the earlier AR-1’s used a Altec’s for their woofers and I think GE for their HF drivers. Not sure if AR stuck with Altec for the AR-3 and then 3A and then 3Ax. GREAT speakers. I almost bought a pair some 45 years ago. But bought a new pair of Altec’s instead.

I still think about the 1947 DeSoto coupe my parents owned. I think the factory radio was made by Motorola. It had an 8" speaker. It was strictly an AM radio, but at the time, we thought it had great tone.

on my last speaker replacements I mentioned before one was “due to the cause”, where one of the OEM cones on 15-years old Nissan with “premium sound” (paper!) indeed disintegrated in a small section, making terrible racket on some frequencies, so replacement was totally warranted and cheap JVC replacement set had rubber cone surrounds and nice Mylar cones, sound improvement was eye-opening to say the least

the 7-years old Mazda speakers were simply too cheap and sounded terrible, but the very same set of JVCs brought it to quite decent sound, not bad for $100 replacing all 4

ah… getting a Dynamat alternative from Home Depot also helped a lot to hush resonance on the low budget