John Meyer bought up the last Production of the Yamaha Drivers ( JA6681B ) It became to expensive for Meyer Sound to buy from manufctureres so the 1401M is their own driver - If Yamaha simply stopped and threw out all the tools - who knows..
I just heard a pair of JA6681B on a Sato Horn, where we did A/B test vs TAD 4001 . there were no contest... The Yamaha is smoother and more detailed... and it grows you... Who speaks Japanese ?? we need those drivers....
In few year a pair in good condittion would be unobtainable....
I just heard a pair of JA6681B on a Sato Horn, where we did A/B test vs TAD 4001 . there were no contest... The Yamaha is smoother and more detailed... and it grows you... Who speaks Japanese ?? we need those drivers....
In few year a pair in good condittion would be unobtainable....
We did go down to 250Hz 18db... It sounds sweet and smooth, especially vocals stand out more crisp and detailed than on the TAD 4001... note that we dont have a tweeter.. only two way... even though the Yamaha is said to roll of at 12kHz.. we used a Lake filter to do crossover and equalize...
I tried Line Magnetic 555 and Radian950pb in my lower midrange horn, crossed below 500hz. Made direct comparisons between Radian 950pb and Fane StudioM. Result was not good. I would not use your Yamaha below 500hz. You will waste your time with this experiment. One reason is beaming. John Hasquin was right with his observation. Beside this, these drivers were not made to reproduce so low frequencies.
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If enough People would write Radian, then they might consider manufacturing
Aftermarket Diaphragms for the JA6681b. Their diaphragms sound in general
better than the originals from Altec or JBL. Some studios even get rid of the
Beryllium diaphragms in their Augspurger Monitors and use the Radian ones,
because all day mixing with the beryllium diaphragms caused to much listening fatigue.
With the Emilar/Radian/Renkus Heinz suspension system the driver might not go as low anymore,
but it would reach 17000hz easily.
Taking the 6681b as low as 250hz is very risky. One little mistake and an
impulse burst kills this brittle copper/berryllium suspension at once.
If a compression driver in the lower region is desired one
can use the cheap Atlas PV5 for duty down to even 100hz.
This driver is a copy of the WE555 except for the field coil motor and the
aluminum diaphragm. It's phenolic diaphragm could be put on a WE555.
When I pointed this out in a German forum one guy modified the Klipsch K55/
Atlas Pv5 driver and put it successfully on a Sato horn to cross it very low.
He was able to get the diaphragm to 1mm excursion. He also said that he
could not hear a difference between the alnico and the ceramic magnet
versions in this duty.
Greets, Klaus
Aftermarket Diaphragms for the JA6681b. Their diaphragms sound in general
better than the originals from Altec or JBL. Some studios even get rid of the
Beryllium diaphragms in their Augspurger Monitors and use the Radian ones,
because all day mixing with the beryllium diaphragms caused to much listening fatigue.
With the Emilar/Radian/Renkus Heinz suspension system the driver might not go as low anymore,
but it would reach 17000hz easily.
Taking the 6681b as low as 250hz is very risky. One little mistake and an
impulse burst kills this brittle copper/berryllium suspension at once.
If a compression driver in the lower region is desired one
can use the cheap Atlas PV5 for duty down to even 100hz.
This driver is a copy of the WE555 except for the field coil motor and the
aluminum diaphragm. It's phenolic diaphragm could be put on a WE555.
When I pointed this out in a German forum one guy modified the Klipsch K55/
Atlas Pv5 driver and put it successfully on a Sato horn to cross it very low.
He was able to get the diaphragm to 1mm excursion. He also said that he
could not hear a difference between the alnico and the ceramic magnet
versions in this duty.
Greets, Klaus
Hallo Klaus,
Allways good get your expert feedback on this driver
I wonder if John Meyer knows what happend with the tooling for the Yamaha Drivers ? In Denmark where I live only a handful of people knows this driver at all...
Its all about TAD and JBL..
I am tempted to try out the RADIAN 850 that crave about or the NSD driver....
However if a "prope" add were made on Ebay and various hifi Markets that Diaphragms were up for sale for the Yamaha, it could be excitng to see the number of people responding to it...
Mfg/ Martin
Allways good get your expert feedback on this driver
I wonder if John Meyer knows what happend with the tooling for the Yamaha Drivers ? In Denmark where I live only a handful of people knows this driver at all...
Its all about TAD and JBL..
I am tempted to try out the RADIAN 850 that crave about or the NSD driver....
However if a "prope" add were made on Ebay and various hifi Markets that Diaphragms were up for sale for the Yamaha, it could be excitng to see the number of people responding to it...
Mfg/ Martin
Hi Martin, I don't know why people are so crazy about the Radian 950pb?
Their 850pb model is flat out better. It was so close to my Yamaha 6681b that
I could care less.
I talked to one of the engineers at Radian and he also said the 850pb is
better. They make of course more money on the 950 so I doubt he would
openly admit this on a forum. One guy on a pa forum has also both the 950 and
the 850 in his posession and compared them on a DDS horn. He said that the 850
is the smoother and more detailed driver.
To find this out is very cheap. Emilar 320b, Radian 850pb, Renkus Heinz 3301
are all basically the same driver with just a different way of fixing the diaphragm
assembly for road servicing.
Their 850pb model is flat out better. It was so close to my Yamaha 6681b that
I could care less.
I talked to one of the engineers at Radian and he also said the 850pb is
better. They make of course more money on the 950 so I doubt he would
openly admit this on a forum. One guy on a pa forum has also both the 950 and
the 850 in his posession and compared them on a DDS horn. He said that the 850
is the smoother and more detailed driver.
To find this out is very cheap. Emilar 320b, Radian 850pb, Renkus Heinz 3301
are all basically the same driver with just a different way of fixing the diaphragm
assembly for road servicing.
Of course Meyer Sound claims to make a better driver. But I would not be surprised if it sounds identical to the 1 inch Radians or Renkus Heinz drivers. They had those drivers studied for so long that it would be really hard to fail producing their own variant of it. The changes are probably insignificant but sufficient enough to not infringe on the copyright. In a just world Jonas Renkus would receive a few dollars from every driver that Radian and Meyer Sound produces.
You may have been doing something wrong?
I run them all the time into 300Hz horns that actually go to 250Hz flat, and with only a 1st order filter... never had any issues.
_-_-
AND, a much much higher frequency crossover, plus a high average SPL. Entirely different idea.
Klaus,
I am puzzled by your assertion that the suspension will be broken? Have you don that?
How much power are you putting on ur drivers?
It ought to be impossible without over powering the drivers.
One needs to de-rate the drivers as you run lower than the spec'd xover frequency.
Radian and other traditional diaphragms are very different than the 1401a/6681b, they will absolutely not perform the same way. I'd suggest reading the patents to see why this is...
_-_-
You are right, must say hearing those Yamaha on the Sato horns at 250 Hz was Magic, no Beaming at all... Powered by a Battery Driven Hypex...
TAD 1601 in a Onken box 350 ltr. (however they are now replaced by ALTEC´s)
My friend usally uses very simple filtering as well, but for this setup he uses a LAKE filter (Dolby Lake) they are good but expensive...
Angelo was using his big Tractrix horn with an extension/adapter to his Radian 950pb, as far as I remember the discussion on the German Analog Forum.
At first he liked it very much but I guess something was not right to him.
It is very hard to beat the Fane Studio 8M. That thing has a wonderful tone
and is very articulate. The horn that Romy and Angelo uses for the Fane is IMO
not done right but it still seems to sound really good. I only used the 8M without a horn and I have not heard a better mid-range cone speaker since.
Actually a few other of the Fane Studio Series cone speakers did not have any real contenders out there, be it Altec JBL or EV. The problem was that
they where not very well known, especially in the US where most PA gear was sold. Sadly they stopped to produce the Studio Series and started to manufacture
“better” speakers that could spec wise keep up with the more modern Speakers. I guess that was the end of the good tone but the beginning of more sales. Go figure.
Klaus
At first he liked it very much but I guess something was not right to him.
It is very hard to beat the Fane Studio 8M. That thing has a wonderful tone
and is very articulate. The horn that Romy and Angelo uses for the Fane is IMO
not done right but it still seems to sound really good. I only used the 8M without a horn and I have not heard a better mid-range cone speaker since.
Actually a few other of the Fane Studio Series cone speakers did not have any real contenders out there, be it Altec JBL or EV. The problem was that
they where not very well known, especially in the US where most PA gear was sold. Sadly they stopped to produce the Studio Series and started to manufacture
“better” speakers that could spec wise keep up with the more modern Speakers. I guess that was the end of the good tone but the beginning of more sales. Go figure.
Klaus
Hi Bear,
it's not about how loud we listen to music. The risk is when some little
mistake sends down a bad burst to the driver. I have drivers that looked very
good and where electrically perfect but the suspension legs had hair cracks
that could not even be seen with the naked eyes unless going very close or
using magnifying glasses. They where used in a PA system with proper
crossovers but failed mechanically. Most drivers are fried before they show
any sign of mechanical problem. Berillyum is not something that can take
an excursion over a specific point unlike any of the other materials that is
used for a suspension in compression drivers.
For me if I had a pair of working aluminum diaphragms on the JA4481b
I would not risk it to go down to 250hz. The magic of this low frequency
range lies not in the JA4481b but in the concept of a reasonably low
resonance compression driver on a proper horn IMO. The magic of the
JA4481b lies in it's smooth and detailed presentation from the mids to 12k.
One thing that most of us horn lovers lack is the a real reference point
because we are just to few and it is way to complicated and expensive to
compare equally equipped systems.
I totally changed my few on horns the last few years. I was a proponent of
the tractrix contour for many years but that has changed. I fried the low
frequency part of my Radian Coax speakers the other day. I was always
amazed by their sound quality and wondered why they sound so good despite
the fact that the coax concept has some major flaws. I then tried to let the
fried 8 inch cone be the waveguide for the compression driver and use an
ordinary P. Audio cone 8" as a mid range to 1k8. This is by far not an ideal
situation but it sounds in some aspects better than my SereoLab 600hz
Tractrix horns ever did.
Getting as wide of an frequency range out of a Tractrix horn as possible
(be an Azura or any other) is a compromise on both frequency ends.
Of course Jean Michael would never admit this and also not the guys that
spend a lot of money on their Tractrix horns. A one inch driver on a good
wave guide from say 1000hz on up and an appropriate horn below with a
Atlas PV5 or similar low resonance compression driver walk’s all over any big
tractrix horn regarding natural representation, hf reproduction and uniformity
of wave propagation.
Just make a simple test with a 1” driver like the Emilar EC175, any of the
Radians or Renkus Heinz 1801 on a cheap $35 Seoul wave guide from Parts
express. Let it run from 1000hz on up and use your tractrix in the the range
from 250 to 1000hz. You will no longer think that your tractrix sounds pretty
natural nor that your Yamaha is all you need for high frequency. All this
applies of course only with well made crossovers.
Until entering the high quality WGs I thought the tractrix was a fairly neutral
sounding horn contour. It's not and that is the reason quite a few experienced
horn lovers went towards high eff. open baffle designs. Not that they will
park there for very long but it tells us that they where looking for the right
balance between efficiency and a natural representation of the musical event.
Klaus
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