Well, I guess you all have heard my K5LA on the videos that I posted yesterday. I decided to take the back covers off the horns to see what the inner anatomy looked like. Here are a few pics. I took all the covers off one by one and the #1, #2, and #4 were shiney and clean and flat as a board. The #3 and #5 were a little more dirty looking and I noticed a slight bulge toward the opening of the horn, you could “pop” the front diaphram like when you know when a can of soup is not sealed. It is hardly noticeable, but the #5 was the worse of all. This was supposed to be rebuilt and I have not hit them at 200 psi but a short blast or two when I first got them because i did not know better. Is this gonna be a problem? how bad to they have to be in order to get a new rebuild kit? Can you hear any bad tones in my videos that I posted?
lol…well I’m glad you listened. Nothing really wrong with them, but the ones that are kind of concave, just flip the disks. put the warped on in the back plate roundside in, so when you tighten the horn back up it’ll straighten out mostly. give em a nice clean…those diaphrams should not be concaved from a few 200psi blasts, but that won’t make too big of difference, just flip it around your good to go.
bulge towards backplate, that way the backplte straightens it. clean it with degreaser/rubbing alcohol…I used an awesome citrus degreaser on my horns, got EVERYthing off everything haha
I just flipped the # 3 and #5 diaphrams around like I have illustrated in the diagram above, I dont think it will matter much since they were only slightly warped.
A bell on my K3 has some SLIGHTLY warped diaphragms from when I bought it and I couldn’t tell a difference in sound at all. I went ahead and did the same thing you did though and swapped em.
I’m assuming that both diaphragm disc’s came from one horn? If so, those disc’s were in two different horns at one time. The person who rebuilt your chimes put the most worn diaphragms on the outer bells which wear out the least, and the least worn were put in the center bells where they get most of the abuse. Put the cushion ring between the disc’s facing the wear pattern, don’t squeeze them together just drop’em in and reinstall on the bell. These directions are per Nathan’s instructions. Once put back together, chime the horn quickly a couple time’s to seat the diaphragm assemblies. Again, I doubt anything is wrong with your K5.
