Can this enclosure/speaker be reverse engineered?

[Sneasle]

Hi All:

I'm relatively new here, had an account for many years but never really been active, I enjoy popping in every so often and reading about people projects, but now I have one of my own so I come for advice.

I have a pair of tower speakers here that were given to my mother as a wedding present almost 30yrs ago. They were given to her by an old friend of her's who was a whizz with everything audio. I had a chance to visit with him once when we were overseas when I was about 15yr old and was blown away at some of the designs this guy had come up with over the years. Unfortunately, due to some ideological differences he and my mom don't talk anymore, so I don't have access to his notes (if they exist) or his thoughts on why he built this the way he did.

I bring up the question of reverse engineering these as I am getting married next week and we were planning on using these for the reception. I've always been so impressed by how well these fill any room, and they do such an amazing job replicating the full audio spectrum that when I saw how degraded they have become over the years I decided I needed to find a way to refresh them if I could. I guess it's too be expected considering all the cats and dogs mom has had over the years, these guys have always been favorite... targets... for them.

That said, they do still work and do an amazing job, so I will repaint the bases black (they have a cloth cover that comes all the way down to the base) and use them as is for the wedding and worry about fixing them up so my mom can continue to enjoy them for many years. I've given some details below and will happily supply any additional requested details (I'm sure there will be many) I just ask as you bear with me as the next month is going to be very busy for me and I won't really have the time or the space to actually (properly) deconstruct these until closer toward the middle/end of April.

Base is ~15" diameter.
Tube is 8" diameter, ~17.5" tall, and is sealed.
Drive is 6", mounted to wood reducer in pipe. Dust cap is dented in, is there an easy way to fix that?
Conic above driver is about ~1.5" deep, ~5" diameter
Platform above driver is ~9.5" diameter.
Crossover has silkscreened markings on it, no ID numbers. Appears to be a kit or pre-built.
Platform above crossover is ~7.5" diameter.
Tweeter is 4" across, 1.5" opening.
Conic above tweeter is about ~2.5" diameter and ~1.5" deep.
Top platform is ~3.5" diameter.

Neither the 6" or 4" speaker has any ID marking on them that I can easily see.


Full length:


6" driver:


Crossover:


Top section:

[Inductor]

Ok. Omnis are always outstanding devices.
Each has it's own magic delivered by it's particular designer.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/plana...-speakers.html
MBL 101 X-treme Omnidirectional Floorstanding Loudspeakers Review
DECWARE / Radial Loudspeakers
Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 5 - YouTube
BeoLab 5 | BeoPhile.com
David Lewis Designers | Design Portfolio | Bang & Olufsen | Speakers

[JMFahey]

Hey!! Killer speakers!!
Don't know what you call "degraded", what you show looks in perfect shape, would only benefit from cleaning and a paint touchup job, nothing else.
And you needn't "re-engineer" anything unless you want to duplicate them, which I think is not the case.
Maybe the cylindrical acoustic cloth cover (which you don't show) is scratched/peed on/whatever (shudder) but that's more related to furniture stuffing or covering than to a real Acoustic problem.
Anyway, you are getting married in a week, *forget* it (besides cleaning/retouching/dusting it), you have +zero* free time now
And ... congratulations !!!!

Just don't blow it at the party by overpowering it, they look suitable for (high quality) background music only, don't let Cousin Vinnie play "Vinnie the WILD!!! DJ"
FWIW I'd bring a separate DJ with his own stuff .... or the idea of "Mom enjoying it for many years" may finish that very same night.

[Inductor]

Yeah, that's not party speakers.
They might have good ambiance for a room/living/lounge that's all. Dance music requires a pro PA with matching amplification/equalization/protection circuits/racks.
What is the TUBE made off?

If later in time you want to replicate it (new speakers) we can just point you for a DIY kit with a good dispersion that would work in a similar fashion. For the same exactly project (maybe that was a prototype) you would need all the same or equivalent drivers and crossovers components.

[Sneasle]

Thanks for the comments guys. Let me put some of your concerns to rest, I will be 'DJing' the wedding myself, no one else will have control over these except me. Partially because I don't trust anyone with them, and partially because the wedding venue doesn't have a sound system so I have had to cobble together a contraption to handle three separate areas without having access to fancy dj equipment.

As too coverage, I'm not really worried about these being able to fill the space as I've run them in an art studio that was a converted school gym and they filled that large open area with ease.

As to what I call 'degraded', the cloth covers are salvageable, I hand washed them and that pulled out most of the cat pee and whatever else was in them. They both have a few tears in them, but they are in OK shape so I will run with them. If you look closely at the base you will see that the threaded rods have a fair bit of rust on them. It only really looks to be surface rust, but I'd like to clean them off if I can. The base piece itself appears to be MDF or something similar, and has started to bubble and de-laminate from all the liquid it's been subjected to.

The tube appears to be PVC to my eye, again, it's been painted so I can't really see any markings, but the orange color that you see where the paint has flaked off appears to be it's original color.

I'll get a picture of them posted up in a bit.

[Sneasle]

Originally Posted by Inductor

Ok. Omnis are always outstanding devices.
Each has it's own magic delivered by it's particular designer.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/plana...-speakers.html
MBL 101 X-treme Omnidirectional Floorstanding Loudspeakers Review
DECWARE / Radial Loudspeakers
Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 5 - YouTube
BeoLab 5 | BeoPhile.com
David Lewis Designers | Design Portfolio | Bang & Olufsen | Speakers

For the prices on the units you've got listed here, if I want a set of these for myself it might be a good idea for me to start learning some new skills so I can recreate them...

[FrankWW]

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/plana...ml#post2826772

Cloning a $3200 Speaker for $400

[Sneasle]

Ok, some details about what I am doing.

The wedding venue is relatively spread out, with an indoor area and two outdoor areas. The DJ's local to the area were neither impressive or priced at what I would consider a reasonable price point, so I decided to do my own thing.

For those of you who use Apple products, you may be aware of a feature called Airplay. Apple has had this in their devices for a while now and there are plenty of other manufacturers that support it. Basically Airplay allows you to send an Audio stream (and now a video stream for devices that support it) over your network to a specific device. For example, I can pull up a a song in iTunes on my laptop and stream it to my living room receiver without having to have a cord between the too. Now, the only Apple product I own is an iphone and I don't own a receiver compatible with it, so I haven't really been able to use it until I started this.

In order to find a way to fully cover all three areas of the wedding venue, I wanted to try and find a way to divert the audio stream from my laptop to several different speaker nodes. After many hours of googling I ran into a mention of Airplay being used, so I took some time to read up on it and I found that iTunes can stream it's audio output to any number of airplay receivers that are on it's network. So I started looking for Airplay receivers and found that most of them are either boombox type devices or your standard AV receivers, not ideal for having to pipe audio to 3 different areas at once (either the same stream or different ones). It was at about this time I ran into a piece of linux software called PulseAudio that had the ability to send Airplay streams to other devices. That lead me to another piece of software called Shairport, that could act as a airplay receiver. I did some reading on shairport and happened to run into a guys blog where he has used a PogoPlug with a linux install as a shairport receiver. I did some digging and found that the PogoPlug that I happened to have was the same model he used. And from there this all snowballed......

So.. what I have now is a set of PogoPlugs E02's (which are basically mini headless linux terminals) running a very light version of linux (ArchLinux ARM) with a usb wifi dongle and usb sound card plugged in, which is then connected to a Lepai 2020+ T-class amplifier, which is then connected to my speakers.

I have 5 sets of these Pogo/Amp assemblies, 2 will be used in the main indoor area, 1 will be used on the outdoor patio, and 1 will be down on the dock to be used during the actual ceremony. The 5th is a spare.

All said and done, each Pogo+amp+soundcard+wifi dongle cost me about $70, including the cost of the cabling. This is the cost if you were to buy everything new again, I had a lot of the stuff lying around so it was significantly cheaper then that for me.

If you want to know more about this airplay setup, I'm happy to share whatever details I can.

As to the comment on overpowering these tower speakers, I'm driving them with one of these Lepia 2020+ amps and I doubt 20w would be enough power to damage one of these guys.

More pics:

With cover:



Pogo and amp:



Just the amp:

[Bare]

Likely your 'setup' will do exactlyy what you hope it will do: deliver mediocre quality sounds over a largish area.
So what?

[JMFahey]

Maybe I'm confused, but wouldn't your setup require 8 speakers?
As in being made out of four 2x20W stereo amplifiers?
AFAIK it was mentioned you have 2 ("one" Stereo pair)

I have a pair of tower speakers

What am I missing?