Was looking into building some Tower Speakers, but then . . .

[Cursh]

So I worked in a vintage bike/stereo/camera shop in Cincinnati a few years back (reliable vintage if any of you are local and remember it)

At the time I was totally into bikes, but since have found a love for old stereo's and old cameras as well.

I was overly impressed with the craftsmenship in a pair of vintage pioneer speakers he had in the shop


for reference only

The attention to detail in the grill has stuck with me and I've wanted to build something similar ever since. The smaller end of the project was to dump a 4x6 Automotive plate into some small bookshelf sized boxes and do the same grill treatment and give them to my sister for her birthday (she is currently using some mid 90's removable boombox speakers with her 60's pioneer reciever, and I just wanted to get her something that looked a bit more period)

I'm still working on that, but the bigger end was building some tower speakers with passive crossovers. I have a 4x6 inifinity reference plate I was going to use for the high end and find something to round out the bass. I've got a Marantz 2030? (its a small stereo reciever that puts out 15 watts per channel.)

When I was cleaning out some speakers from my Airstream (we had a rapture party in it, and a friend of mine brought his stereo equipment, and left it in there for months) there were a rogue set of Polk Tower speakers that sound really good, and no one was willing to admit to owning. The new plan is to just build a sleeve for them to give them the look of the old Pioneers (because I am confident that I won't be able to build anything that sounds better that is within my budged)

The left tower lacks bass response. It is a 2 part system with a tweeter and a 5-6" woofer. at first I thought the woofer wasn't receiving any power, but its putting out music from the upper range, just nothing below (and I'm guessing) somewhere between 3-5k htz. I've swapped it to the channel that the good speaker was running off of and it hasn't changed the sound.

I'm not sure what would cause this (shot in the dark being A: something is wrong with the speaker, or B: there is something wrong with the passive crossover if its a second order crossover perhaps the coil is bad or being bypassed somehow?)

Any concrete direction on what to look for and how to test it would be appreciated (even if its just good terms to search or a link to a thread that would help me out. I tried searching, but I don't know enough of the technical terms for whats happening to get good results)

[Ep157Ul4]

push the cone in gently if it moves freely then lex parsimoniae *occhams razor* would suggest the low pass on the crossover is goosed check the resistors for passing current and take a look at the capacitors for bleeding/bulging if signal is going through then there is a short on the low pass

[Ep157Ul4]

Originally Posted by Ep157Ul4

push the cone in gently if it moves freely then lex parsimoniae *occhams razor* would suggest the low pass on the crossover is goosed check the resistors for passing current and take a look at the capacitors for bleeding/bulging if signal is going through then there is a short on the low pass

oh and check for burn marks -yellowing or browning- on the crossover board i have a beautiful pair of kef 104/2s with a goosed high pass to wit the resistor shorted and set fire to the baffle material

im yet to get round to finding matched caps and resistors to relace the damage

[Cal Weldon]

If you have specific questions, feel free to post them in the appropriate forum. You'll get more answers that way.