[falcon123]

i also have an 84b. imho i think it best to send it out and have it reconed.make sure you get a paper cone. foam surrounds that ive seen will stand proud of the frame. this will require you to somehow build a spacer to keep the surround from hitting grille cloth frame. failing to do so will muffle the speaker. as to your modern speaker conversion you will need to consider the electromagnet thats on the speaker. you cant just remove it. its other job is to act as a power supply choke. if you do you will need to add one and theres very little room on the chassis for it . or add a power resistor and increase the power supply capacitance values. lastly you will need a speaker transformer for your new speaker which is 4-8 ohm i presume. the original drives a .89 ohm voice coil. again you got to put that stuff somewhere. those metal cans arent capacitors they are covers for the antenna transformer and if transformer. if your radio is original there will be a cardboard tube thats a dual capacitor. this isnt a very sophisticated radio. they are remarkable to me as theres so little in them and for what they are they do it pretty well. but the fact is they were a low price range radio for the masses that could afford it due to the depression.