Wharfedale Airedale Vintage Speakers

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Just picked these up, how wonderful are these?! Always wanted to try some vintage wharfedales and i have to say i am not dissapointed. These ones have been really looked after and refurbished back to former glory.


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A lovely piece of audio furniture, probably worth exploring how to better integrate the sound of mid and tweeter unit to a woofer for those keen on having something to mess around with and potentially altering the original design to something so different that true fans would qualify it as "audio sacrilege". :)
 
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visual inspection shows surrounds are in good condition! Speaker wires need changing though, especially for the bass it is far to thin a wire.

Crossover design is not anything special? Maybe need to bypass those attenuators, needs modern speaker binding posts as old ones are so small and rubbish.
 
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I wonder what the balance between the drivers will be like if you simply bypass the pots?

I'm suspicious about the inductors. The ones found in 70s Wharfedale models such as the Linton look like those. I would favour replacing the inductors with air cored ones.

Do you have a serial number for these Airedales?
 
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The sensitivity of the W15RS is 96 dB SPL at 1 m on axis , 1 w. The Super8RSDD averages around 94 db in the range 400 to 3000 Hz and the Super 3 if the peak in response around 9kHz is ignored , averages 89 dB ( at 1m on axis) . The 50 ohm pots appear to be redundant except for the fact that the speakers face upwards and there is a hefty contribution to the sound field by virtue of the rear radiation from the mid and treble speakers. A more up to date crossover design may be worthwhile.
 
In order for me to update the crossovers I would need to measure the parameters for each speaker, use REW to measure the response of the speakers in the enclosure and then from the results design and make a crossover.

Unless someone on here has a design already done and can assist?
 
Thats true Galu, i just ordered the book "A pair of Wharfedales" give a bit of insight into wharfedale, Briggs etc.

My ones were built in 1969, after Briggs left the company. There were obvious changes to the speaker version i have compared to the original Briggs built Airedales.

Don't get me wrong they sing beautifully and i am still adjusting to how they sound and music genres that really suit them.

The great thing about this future project is i can change things around and always revert back to original if i do not like the modifications
 
Snap! I was given the book for Christmas! So far I've only flicked through it looking at the illustrations. Lots of reading to follow if I stop spending time on this forum!

I'm running Wharfedale RS/12/DD full range drivers in my man cave. I bought them in 1969 and they're still sounding great these 50 years later!

They are illustrated in Briggs' book 'More About Loudspeakers' first published in 1963, so they are very much a Briggs creation. I've been a big Briggs fan ever since buying the speakers.

And yes, the Airedale may be regarded as a blank canvas as far as experimenting with crossovers is concerned.
 
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