What to do with these OLD 10" extended range drivers?

[swirv]

I salvaged a pair of 10" drivers from a friends atic a while ago and was curious if the group had any sugestions on what to do with this driver. It was used in an open baffle design in a console HI-Fi from the 70's(?) paired with a small fostex horn tweeter. I have a few pics of the drivers. Forgive me for the poor quality, the images where taken with my cel phone.

[swirv]

side view...

[swirv]

Edge showing paper cone with paper surround.

[swirv]

Back of driver showing markings. "zenith" 49-1221 27179

[Stocker]

You should give them to me.

Slap them in a quickie box and see what they sound like. I'd try a cubic foot or two, just in case there is some bass capabiilty there. Were they mounted or just laying around raw?

[BillFitzmaurice]

I'd toss them. Judging by the overall look they aren't going to perform well in the bass, which relegates them to midrange use, and tens are not much good for midrange as they get beamy at too low a frequency. You can get a modern 6 1/2 that wil run rings around these for as little as 15 bucks, so I'd say that these are really only good for a collector or for landfill.

www.billfitzmaurice.com

[AGGEMAM]

Dumpster filler!

I could be wrong but they look absolutely ghastly .. I'd toss them with a second thought. However if you really wonder about it, you can always test as mentioned above, I'm sure the result would be the same though.

[swirv]

Ok... These things are not going in the trash. They are from Zenith's "Big Bottom" days and have a good amount of bass for an all paper 10". The mid-range is pretty good. I have a few ideas on what to do with them but would like some constructive advise.

I have no specs on the drivers but suspect they where used open baffel. I figure I'd use them as a woofer with a NSB as a mid and a super tweeter. I have a few NSB's and Onkyo tweeters from a El'Cheepo project I was doing. I also have a pair of unlabled inductors from a lowpass crossover used in auto subs. The crossovers where 2nd order 85Hz @ 4R. The 10's are 16R speakers so how do I figure the crossover freq if I use just the inductor and run the 10's first order LP. The cap value was 331mfd. The 10" drivers are pretty loud and keep up with the NSB's. I figure they are much more efficient than the 4" drivers.

Id really like to use these drivers and get the most out of them. I do not belive in throwing away a learning experiance.

I also wonder if I should ModPodge the 10"s. Dave D claims that alomost all paper drivers could do with a coat of the stuff.

pic of inductor

[BillFitzmaurice]

Have you at least measured the Fs? I'd be surprised if it's less than 80 Hz, and that pretty much rules them out as woofers. I'd give more constructive advise but you're going to have to help out a bit.

[Kensai]

If you found them in an OB config unit, I would suggest trying that. They have the look of an OB compatible unit. Grab yourself a couple $3 MDF "shelves" from Home Depot, cut you a couple circles out at ear level, and devise some cheap method to make them stand up. I used a pair of $2.50 garage wall "hangers" (basically U shaped pipe, flattened a bit on one side with a pair of screw holes and plastic capped on the other, meant for hanging up hose or bikes or whathave you on your garage walls), and maybe $1 worth of hardware (bolt, nut and the largest diameter washer I could find with the right sized hole in the middle) to make my testers (which I seem to have failed to stop testing with so far) stand up. I've got them sitting on a cut square of that puffy mesh shelf/drawer lining stuff since I'm in a raw concrete basement, but if you're on carpet, no worries. Once you've got them stood up, just apply some careful pressure near the top to get both hangers bent evenly and maybe give the thing a very slight backwards tilt.

One other consideration, since they're 10"ers with no coax mounted tweet or even a whizzer, they're not likely too extended on the high end, probably not even approaching 10khz. Possibly leave enough space at the top of your testers to later mount a cheap tweeter to handle the top octave or two (with a cheap cap and possibly a cheap resistor or lpad in line to cross and control).

Have fun and report back if you do anything with them.

Kensai