Been in this for a long time and with the recent time off work I decided to start cleaning up my machines. A couple years ago I was opening up my main Elmo SSL projector when I noticed the paper speaker had started to tear around the paper surround. I bought an automotive replacement at the local parts store. The sound quality greatly improved and the sound was much louder. I looked at my Elmo's the other night and saw that they also had the cheap paper cone speakers which were dry and brittle so stopped by the local shop and bought one automotive speaker to test as a replacement. My question is this, the replacement I bought has a magnet almost as big as the speaker. The ST1200 has a very thick frame but now I am wondering if installing it will harm a magnetic soundtrack? This wasn't a problem with 16mm optical but I don't want to damage the super8 prints I have. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Sounds too risky to me Erik.

Erik
If the sound from the ST-1200 is OK I see no point in replacing the internal speaker.
When the time does come you might be able to find a shallow speaker which is/was designed to fit in a car door.

I must admit, I've never had a need to replace any speakers within an 8mm projector. I'm sure there have been ones that were faulty, but quite rare i would think.

I think it a bit risky due to the larger magnet, but if you had an old 'sacrificial' Super 8 sound film that was faded and you no longer cared about it, you could test with it and see if there was any distortion in the soundtrack due to proximity to the magnet

I have heard before to keep the Super 8 films away from magnets to avoid damage to the recorded sound, but honestly do not know if this is an 'urban myth' or not.

Where I keep my Super 8 in a cupboard, has magnet catches, so I just place silent films in that area, and try to keep the sound films away, although they do have the cardboard box for protection. I often wondered if a magnet would either cause some kind of background noise (Crackling) or erase the soundtrack?

It's not that the older speakers are faulty it's just that the old paper cones are really dry and brittle. The second Elmo I bought had been in a storage unit since it was new and had to deal with goo belts to begin with. I figured with the sucess I had replacing the speaker in my 16mm that maybe I could get better sound with a replacement but I am worried that the magnet will dull or erase the sound on super8 prints. I did to a test tonight and the magnetic field of the speaker is very short. I think I'll take the advice of another user and run a junk print several times to see if the speaker affects the sound or if the frame blocks the magnetic affect on the film. I'll post the results here.