Copy-cat Drivers

It would be quite fun to test these.

KEF Clone DZ05
KEF Clone DZ 06

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Scanspeak Clone EY04

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SB Acoustics CDC Tweeter kind of clone

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That would be interesting! I know the older verions had different drivers but I didn't open a KEF Q150. That would be a great source for that driver, with a good crossover these are really fine speakers!
I don't think they are the Meta version ( with that chamber on the magnet) " Metamaterial" . They might be the " nornal " LS50. Not sure tho ! I have to do some research.
I was thinking for some time to get the Q150 or Q350 for some time now , and make my own box for them.
 
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Where can I buy KEF drivers without buying a full speaker? I've only seen in-ceiling.

I bought a pair of the R series midwoofer+tweeter from my local hifi shop for £150 each a few years ago. Don't know the price of LS50 drivers which were a modification of the R series driver not a Q series driver and had things like shorting rings. I believe the current Q series drivers are more expensive which seems odd but I am not fully up to date with current prices or policies like not replacing coaxial tweeters separately.

I owned some KEF speakers at the time but not the R series. I had been intending to buy the R series bookshelf speaker but they unexpectedly failed an audition for reasons that weren't wholly clear so I thought I would buy some drivers and have a play. Perhaps this was relevant and/or being an existing KEF customer was relevant. It was definitely after KEF had clamped down on small manufacturers in the US buying up replacement KEF drivers to use in their products.

I have since moved and, like many, my old speaker shop has closed. The people in the closest hifi shop to me selling KEF speakers looked blank when I asked about drivers but they are in a shopping arcade and don't do installations, HT, etc... like the old shop or have drivers in draws to talk around with customers. I contacted KEF directly and found out they don't want to sell tweeters separately for coaxials but I got the impression, perhaps wrongly, that they might if pressed.

KEF customer support is good by modern standards but they don't want to bother with the DIY market which is a pity because their coaxial drivers are among the best value for money around. I suspect you may be able to wangle a one off pair but very unlikely more. Designing and having a driver manufactured in small quantities is certainly viable for a small company these days. The problem is that given the way the market works it is hard to see it being financially viable unless you serve the boutique sector and support it with a substantial amount of appropriate marketing.
 
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Yeah I agree with all of that Andy. I think a lucky person might get a pair of 'replacement' KEF drivers from a dealer but it's not garunteed if you have no prior relationship.

Kind of off-topic but I have looked in to manufacturing my own coaxial driver. I still want to do it, but it does need a big chunk of cash (I mean not an amount you want to gamble on a whim) and I got a bit scare about not knowing how the spider cone and surround would interact before paying for prototypes.

I wonder if people would go for a crowd funded coaxial if the end result was not fully guaranteed 🤔
 
It's straightforward these days to use simulation to develop the detailed design of drivers. Damping can be expected to be tricky but the rest relatively straightforward if one has time and access to appropriate engineering software. Commercial software is expensive and freely available software awkward to use and more limited in what it can do.

A high quality driver comparable to the KEF or Genelec ones is going to require a fair chunk of design and development effort which I personally wouldn't want to attempt without decent simulation software to keep down the number of design/manufacture/test iterations with expensive physical prototypes. A simpler driver consisting of a conventional small tweeter inside a conventional cone may well not need much development effort but with reasonable examples from SB Acoustics costing £50 with plenty of car examples around at similar or cheaper prices there doesn't seem to be much of a gap in the market. Perhaps reducing globalisation will create one locally.

The most extraordinary things have been crowd funded in the past although I believe enthusiasm has waned somewhat because very little of the extraordinary ever got delivered. My guess would be only a handful of the few hundred DIYers one might need would be interested but I am basing that on the chat I see here rather than any experience with crowdfunding sites.