Cleaning the self-healing rubber on Beolab 3

I've had a pair up on the wall near the kitchen for years, it's never really occurred to clean them anymore than a dust now and again.

I took them down earlier to move them and of course found they were really sticky. I phoned my local B&O dealer and they told me they always use an antistatic foam cleaner from Maplins to clean theirs up. I went and got some but it doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. I've left it to soak a while as per instructions but the surface still seems the same. I've tried giving one of them a bit of a rub on the back but I'm worried that I'm going to rub through the self-healing rubber coating. I've also tried fairy liquid diluted in warm water.

I was going to put them back on their floor stands so I'd really like them to clean up nicely rather than being a sticky surface that's going to attract every bit of dust that comes their way. These are the graphite grey ones (if that makes any difference)

Does anyone have any suggestion on what to use?

All help appreciated - thank you, David.

Sorry to hear.

Have no advice other than just saying that my Beocom 2 table base has the same problem.

All sticky and messy.

Found no cure so far.

a friend of mine, on a beolab 2 has used some talcum powder with good results.

a friend of mine, on a beolab 2 has used some talcum powder with good results.

There is a lot of products around with rubber-plastics that now are turning into a mushy goo. It is essentially a material that is breaking down and is changing due to its chemical bond. This happens for example often on rubberized computer mice after some years. I've had it happen to both a Logitech harmony remote, a Wacom pen and a few cables with rubberized texture. I am not sure this is the same thing as with your beolabs but I think they were designed about at the same time factories started using this new rubber technique to quite easily make things look cool. As far as I know there is no cure to that material, mostly people wipe it off completely with isopropanol, but of course that changes the appearance too.

Hi,

Thank you for the tip, I thought it had done the trick.

I gave one of them a light coat and brushed it off. It was certainly dryer and less sticky but whatever is covering the surface is still there. I tried putting some of the foam cleaner on afterwards and it is a bit of an improvement but there is still a bit of tackiness there.

I gave it a little scrape with my thumb nail at the back and it has revealed a lighter more metallic colour - trouble is I can't remember if this is the colour it should be (I bought them so long ago) or should this colour have a coating of something over the top and be slightly darker and I've scraped it off?

Needless to say I've now got run marks from using this foam cleaner - it isn't looking too good now. I might nip into B&O with it tomorrow to see if they can cast any light.

Thank you again though. David 

Hi Michael,

Yes, now you've mentioned it, I've noticed one or two cables and bits doing a similar thing. Oh how annoying.

I'll try the isopropanol in the morning though - thank you for the advice.

Best wishes,

David

Michael:

There is a lot of products around with rubber-plastics that now are turning into a mushy goo. It is essentially a material that is breaking down and is changing due to its chemical bond. [...] As far as I know there is no cure to that material, mostly people wipe it off completely with isopropanol, but of course that changes the appearance too.

Michael is right. If the decomposition process started, there's no cure. Have a look at Beocom 2 charging stations or the lovely Earset 2. They suffer from the same problem but this time it's not B&O's fault as it happens to nearly all equipment that used this rubber plastics.

If it is looking really bad, wipe it down with alcohol and respray with plastidip

We've had plenty of the 'sticky' BeoLab 3's and have tried just about everything...

I can categorically say that once they have really gone sticky, you'll never get them back to 'factory fresh'. The coating has broken down, and the only way to get them back to 'as new' is to buy new cases from B&O.

We did go through a phase of having them bead-blasted, etch primed, then sprayed in an oven by a local independent auto body shop who were so good our local BMW Dealer used them above their own body shop!  However, the owner was poached by BMW to open and manage their own new premises and the price to get them done started to exceed buying new cases.

Why don't you buy some white cases from B&O and have a B&O engineer transfer the internals?  It'll be like having a new pair of speakers - and as they're painted they'll never go sticky! 

Lee

Hi David

 

As Lee says the only answer is new cases and it is not as daunting as it seems.

 

Jonnie

Last night I thought I'd give one of them a quick blast of Bohle glass cleaner. It cuts through just about anything on glass and I thought that they looked so bad now that it couldn't really hurt, anyway, this morning the results aren't bad. It's not perfect but most of the stickiness has gone, but I think you're right, I'll have to bite the bullet and get new cases for them.

Thank you for all the advice - David

Hi

I’ve had my pair of Beolab 3 speakers from new (about 13 years old now) and I noticed about 3 years ago that both cases had gone very sticky and unsightly. 

I took the plunge and bought a bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol 99.9% and decided to clean them with this as they were looking so poor I didn’t think I could make them look any worse. I must admit that when it comes to high end products like B&O I personally wouldn’t roll my sleeves up to issues like this and would leave it to the professionals. However, despite many calls directly to B&O and dealers about this sticky issue I got the impression they weren’t interested and I was on my own so to speak. 

So, I removed them from their stands and set to work. All I needed was a few 100% cotton cloth/rags, a pair of disposable rubber gloves and a bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol 99.9% (500ml should be plenty). I made sure the cloth was kept moist at all times as it won’t remove the sticky surface otherwise and concentrated rubbing on a small area at a time until you start to see the top dirty sticky surface disappear and the original colour reappear. WORD OF WARNING try this on a small area first (I did it to the rear underneath where it couldn’t be seen if I messed up). I made sure I was also in good natural sunlight during cleaning because as the original colour shines through if you keep on rubbing in the same area you WILL remove this surface too and then go through to the base surface (a light grey colour as with my speakers) which you don’t want to do! It’s a fine balance but is easily achievable if you concentrate and as I said earlier ‘do this in good natural sunlight’  As you will see from the second photo the clean cloth will soon get dirty and it’s important to keep turning the cloth and using a clean piece each time keeping the cloth really moist. I deliberately didn’t rub the cloth over the ‘Bang and Olufsen’ logo as I assumed the raised text would rub against the cloth too harshly and remove the thin layer of coating thus revealing the light grey base colour. I occasionally rubbed over the black outer speaker edge but it didn’t appear to do any harm. It probably took me about 4 hours in total to clean both speakers and this also included giving them a gentle but thorough buffing with a fresh clean cloth after all the sticky dirt was removed and then again using clean cotton cloths I used ‘Mr Sheen’ (a household aerosol polish) to give the whole unit a lovely smooth polished finish. 

Personally I am very happy with the results, ALL the stickiness is removed to reveal the original shiny colour once more, they feel great to touch now lovely and smooth. Hands up, I admit there are some areas where I rubbed the cloth either too hard or for too long and it has gone through to the layer underneath (mostly around the speaker edges or on any edge where the coating seems to be at its thinnest) but it’s not that noticeable unless you are up close to it in bright light. I don’t know long term how they are going to last, I also don’t know how to continue cleaning them if to use any household polish or not? A mad part of me even thought about mixing up a diluted solution of PVA and applying it to act as a sealer, but one things for certain is that I’m glad I’ve done it, they look and feel superb and if they go sticky again sometime in the future I know that they can’t be cleaned again in this way as it will certainly clean the surface away to the base layer, I guess the next step would be to getting them professionally spray painted or sourcing new cases. 

 

Be careful rubbing sticky surfaces down in this way on other products, as different products have different layers of thickness and you may go straight through to base layer in a matter of seconds as I discovered with my Beocentre 2 head unit!

 

PICTURE 1

Sticky, crazed, unsightly surface of Beolab 3.

PICTURE 2

Lower area been cleaned some dirt on the cloth, notice colour difference and now starting to shine.

 

PICTURE 3

Cleaned speaker on the left, uncleaned speaker on the right.