by EWBrown » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:36 am
Some of those 1970s vintage Japanese speakers had very high SPLs.
I used to think that they sounded pretty bad, but then that was when they were connected to early 1970s SS receivers amps (which did sound pretty bad).
Put these on tube amps, and they really come into a league of their own.
A lot of these speaker systems had some pretty elaborate and complex 4 and 5 way driver arrangements, and perhaps some crossover mods should improve their sound (at least replace the non-polarized electrolytic coupling caps with Solens or Dayton MKPs).
One overlooked brand (I had four of them while over in Viet Nam,and Isold them before I left) is "Coral" speakers, These were 8 inch, 2-ways and reportedly are very good "tube-friendly" speakers.
On a Sansui 5000X, they sounded "mediocre" at best, but then that was the amp's fault, not the speakers'... That Sansui 5000X made every speaker I ever tried on it sound bad. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_21 Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_21
OK, I digress a bit...
After the 5000X power amps blew out (they always did, even with the "super-special mil-spec mods") I used it as a tuner / preamp for a while, before consigning it to the freebie table at a hamfest... The mods for the 5000X entailed replacing the TO-3 power transistors and their driver tranistors, with some nice mil-spec devices courtesy of Uncle Sam - I worked in a repair depot over there, and it was like working in an experimenter's candy store...
Those power amps were all direct-coupled, and before the days of complimentary pairs, so the outputs were coupled through some big fat electrolytic caps, which was the main cause of their atrocious sound quality. If one transistor went bad, it was like a string of firecrackers, they ALL went bad...
/ed B in NH
Real Radios Glow in the Dark