My Friend Spilled Tea on a PC Speaker

Any hope for recovery?

[Jane_Doe]

My friend spilled some tea she was drinking on the outside of one of her computer speakers the other day. She wiped it up, not realizing that some tea may have gotten into the box. A few days later she used the PC again and now the sound from the speaker where she spilled the tea has a lot of static.

Outside of taking it to a repair place or getting a new speaker, are there any home treatments she could try to fix the problem?

She is a single mom with two kids, so if if you have any low cost home treatment suggestions I could pass along to her, I'm sure they would be greatly appreciated.

[Woz]

If it was black tea without sugar then taking it apart and giving it a good dry out in front of a hand heater (on low) might do the trick.

(I once spilt a cup of black tea over a recording console worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars but after dissasembling it, wiping it dry, blow drying it and reassembling it, there was no damage, apart from the heart rate and ego.)

However if it was white tea and/or with sugar then I don't hold as high hopes as that would crystalize on the components. In that case, time for new speakers.

Onya
Woz

[Jane_Doe]

Okay, thanks Woz. I don't know what kind of tea it was, but I'll pass your suggestion along to her.

[Frank_Rizzo]

There's probably no components in the box (unless it's the one with the on off switch / volume control) so you should be ok.

What may have happened is that tea has got onto the cone and soaked up. Can't really see this happening though unless the tea spill was a tidal wave.

If it did hit the cone then as the other poster said, just let it dry out. It may have gotten onto the centre magnet and cause stiction so the speaker may need to be replaced.

What kind of speakers are they? Cheapy desktop speakers or 5.1 kind of things? If cheapy, you should be able to replace them for a few bucks.

[Jane_Doe]

She has a Dell computer she bought last year, so I would imagine that her speakers are whatever comes standard with a basic Dell package.

Unfortunately, several days had passed after the spill before she tried her computer again and noticed the static sound. I would imagine that the tea would have already dried out during that time.

[RoadRash]

Call DELL, all hardware comes with a 1yr warentee, not sure if this would be covered, but its worth a try.

[Iguana]

Brew another cup?

[jim_w]

Couldn't there be a crossover in the speaker? If so, then a cap may have gotten wet. Caps are used for filtering and that could cause static on certain frequencies.

[killroy]

If it hit an electric board, you can even carefully humid wipe to remove the sugar or stickyness and then thouroughly dry afterwards, I saved many a delicate pice with a wet cloth.

SN

[jim_w]

Kilroy, yea, as long as current didn't flow prior to the clean up. Water will conduct and that could short out other things. If it has a volume control, that may have sugar or something on the pot and causing the wiper to not make solid contact. ergo static

[Jane_Doe]

Okay, thanks for all the suggestions. I'll keep you posted if she finds something that helps.