Another contender for good inexpensive OB mid range drivers.

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I am building a new pair of OB,s. The original plan was to just use the parts i have but change the appearance to something more wife friendly :judge:. I wiped up a small box from the scraps to build a little guitar amp with.

This is the driver I bought for it.
Riftone G825M - 8 ohm - Guitar Speaker

I then realized it is the ceramic version of these.
VOR V8A-25: 8 inch Alnico Guitar Speaker | Midwest Speaker Repair

When It arrived I hooked it up to my little t amp to make sure all was good and WOW was I surprised.I very quickly realized This little gem deserved some serious listening. I have a pair of old two ways that housed 8" woofers. I had adapted them to use my fe166en's in.
They are just for listening in my hobby room while im working on stuff and not ideal for either driver for sure. I popped out one of the 166's and replaced it with the riftone and began to do some breaking in and listen to a range of different music. I am so impressed by this driver I will be ordering a second. They are def more efficient then the 166's ( but not by a huge margin) and the more i hear them the more I prefer them over the fostex.
They do vocals amazingly well and have loads of detail. They def sound more open than the fe's but what really got me is the tone. The music's texture seems noticeably richer than the other driver. Its like going from chocolate milk to a chocolate shake. Of course this is still in the very early stage of testing and too soon to decide if they are good enough to replace the TB w4-1337's that my ob's currently use (and I am very fond of). But for the price they look to be one heck of a bargain.
 
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Its a shame that there is no response graph shown for the ceramic version. I dont know how different it would be from the alnico. When I get the second driver I will try some basic eq with my dsp , based on the alnico graph just to see how they respond.
 
I have purchased a second driver and installed it in the other box. It didn't take long for me to decide these will be used for my new OB's. I will have to change the baffles to suit them since I.ve already done the cut outs for the TB"s but I like the new drivers so much its def worth the trouble.I dont recall ever hearing speakers that do vocals like these. Its almost eerie at times. Even the most subtle changes in the singers voice can be heard.They do hi's better than my fostex driver's and are definitely more musical. I have to move them into my main room so i can space them apart and do some more listening from a distance but I have no doubt at all the sound stage will be deep and wide.Even in the less than optimal boxes I could quite happily listen to them as they are for a long time.For the price they are a gem for sure and deserve consideration from anyone looking for some mid rangers that punch well above their weight class.
 
Its a shame that there is no response graph shown for the ceramic version. I dont know how different it would be from the alnico. When I get the second driver I will try some basic eq with my dsp , based on the alnico graph just to see how they respond.

From a frequency response perspective they should likely be very, very similar. If you did a Klippel it'd be tremendously interesting, as you'd likely see lower inductance modulation with AlNiCo and some other interesting effects.
 
Once I have my baffles done and the drivers mounted an properly broken in my next step will be to do some measurements. That will be a new challenge for me since ive never done it. But I am def willing to invest the time etc to learn. So far I have not noticed anything harsh or unpleasant. Very non fatiguing to listen too. It may turn out that these driver dont measure great but somehow sound good. The amp I am using is a nice sounding little amp but certainly not reference quality, and still I decided to rework my baffles to accommodate the drivers based only on what I've heard so far. That says a lot about how much I like them. I would be really keen to hear the alnico versions.
 
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