SONY SS B-1000 speaker

[Bing Yang]

I just bought a pair of SONY SS B-1000 speakers. Nothing fancy with a 5.25" PP woofer and a small tweeter. They are on sale for $39.99. There are some feedback on Amazon.com. People in general like them.

I took them home and ran a short break-in. These speakers sound surprisingly good. I took it apart. There is only one 1.2 uF capacity before the tweeter.

Has anyone done any mods to it? I will be happy to hear them.

[gooki]

Nothing wrong with a simple 6db highpass on the tweeter, provided the drivers are designed for it.

[Ron E]

I have 2 pairs of the ssmb100h, one is in the box never opened, and the other is sitting on a shelf. They actually have reasonably good tonal balance, but measurements show that one has a broad dip at ~4-5k, IIRC, and the other is quite flat, so the price for cheapness is poor QC. They sound a little rough around the edges, perhaps the result of running the woofer free. I once planned to do a crossover mod for them for fun, but they keep changing models so I'm not sure how much interest there would be. I still think they are one of the best bargains out there.

A little extra damping in the box would probably be the cheapest improvement. Mine has what looks like a white scrub pad behind the woofer and that's it. You could replace the cap with a film cap, as well.

[Bing Yang]

I took apart the speaker and put some loose fiber in the box. There was nothing in the box.

I did more listening to the speakers. They sound really nice. The tweeter is nice and smooth. The only problem is that there is a kind of ringing sound when playing solo piano. When the hammer hit the high note string, instead of a clean note that decays with time, there is a bit oscillation of the sound as it decays.

What could cause this? I suspect the woofer breaks up at high frequency. Is there any way to test this hypothesis?

Could it be some kind of cavity oscillation of the woofer? Maybe I can remove the dust cap and put in a phase plug?

[Ron E]

well, you could do some sine sweeps and mark when it becomes untidy, then do a notch filter there. This would be a shot in the dark, though. Best is to measure them.