Help with crossovers and Potentiometers

[lonelobo]

In the last year I have become the proud, though dissatisfied owner of a pair of Frazier Model 7 speakers and a pair of Frazier Model 11 speakers. Frazier was a Dallas speaker builder who was a contemporary and friend of Paul Klipsch. They were admirerers of each other's work and owners of each other's speakers.

Both pairs of these speakers do not sound right. They sound less impressive than their much smaller stable mates though period reviews suggest they were much better speakers.

Their were only 15 pair of the Model 11's ever made, with pairs going to Elvis and Buddy Holly's manager among others. My pair were the showroom pair and people who heard them attest to the fact that the bass could "break 2x4s". That is what is obviously missing from them now.

The Model 7's are much less rare. All of these speakers have "brilliance" and "presence" potentiometers for adjusting such. The 7's in particular sound awful. Adjusting the potentiometers results in scratchy horrible output/tweeters and midrange components coming and going and going and coming, but always too soon...
One of the pots just spins and spins with no apparent effect.

How do I go about finding replacement potentiometers for both these speakers? Will I find specs on the pots themsleves? I am trying to find a Frazier engineer who supposedly still lives in Dallas, but so far he has eluded me.

[minimike]

Try http://audiokarma.org/
and look for the frazier user's groug (fug) in a search. There's a guy there with a tag line that say he used to be Jack Frazier's
manager. He may be able to help you a bit. If possible, can you em me pix of the 11's and 7's? I'm compiling a photo catalog of old frazier stuff. I've got 2 sets of black boxes, and a pair of Dixielanders.
Mike in NY

[lonelobo]

Hi Mike,
The guy you are referring to is Todd. We all spend most of our online conversation concerning Fraziers over at the Klipsch site, www.klipsch.com under the 2-Channel Audio Forum. Go there and you will meet a few Frazier heads and the F.U.G.I.T. charter. We have all loaded many pics of our speakers there in the distant and recent past.

[alspe]

Hi.

I'm hijacking this thread. I have nice Goodmans Magnum-K speaker from my friend. They have two potentiometers in rear panel (top and mid). Crossover consists 1.order for treble, 2.order (high pass) for mid and 2.order for woofer. So two capacitors in series, third is parallel.

Pots are not working fine. They get little disturbance when touched and they don't trim fine. Seems like top pot has on/off effect (and mid pot is bit "clonky"). Bright when full open and dull even a little turned backwards.

Other pot is 50R linear and another is 15R Lpad.

Are those pots cleanable with some kind of electronic cleaning spray or are they consumable? 50R linear pot I can find but how to replace Lpad? Could it be possible that fault is in dried caps and pots could be fine? (maybe not...)

Here is pictures and XO drawing.

[skeptic43]

Look here
Parts Express: Featured Categories
Most are 8 ohms these days.
It's hard to find 5 or 15 ohm models. However, Ohmite does offer a variety of rheostats in a number of ohm levels. They can be used as L-pads also.