Low rent loudspeaker driver alert! :-)
mhardy6647
Posts: 33,818
One notes that good ol' PartsExpress is selling the Goldwood 8" twincone for 10 US Samoleums a pop through Wednesday this week.
https://www.parts-express.com/grs-8fr-8-full-range-8-speaker-pioneer-type-b20fu20-51fw--292-430
Are these great drivers? No.
Are they great $10 drivers? Not particularly.
Is there fun to be had (e.g., on open baffles) for $20 invested in a pair? Very possibly.
YMMV, though, of course.
Yes, I do have a pair -- someplace. They're... interesting.
Figured it worthy of mention, so mention it I have.
https://www.parts-express.com/grs-8fr-8-full-range-8-speaker-pioneer-type-b20fu20-51fw--292-430
Are these great drivers? No.
Are they great $10 drivers? Not particularly.
Is there fun to be had (e.g., on open baffles) for $20 invested in a pair? Very possibly.
YMMV, though, of course.
Yes, I do have a pair -- someplace. They're... interesting.
Figured it worthy of mention, so mention it I have.
Comments
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Oh so you got stuck with some cr a pp y drivers and figured you fish someone else so you wouldn't be alone in that endeavor
Kidding
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"I'm an excellent driver." -Raymond "Rainman" Babbitt
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Me like whizzer conesHome Theater/2 Channel:
Front: SDA-2ATL forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/143984/my-2as-finally-finished-almost/p1
Center: Custom Built forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/150760/my-center-channel-project/p1
Surrounds & Rears: Custom Built forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/151647/my-surround-project/p1
Sonicaps, Mills, RDO-194s-198s, Dynamat, Hurricane Nuts, Blackhole5
Pioneer Elite VSX-72TXV, Carver PM-600, SVS PB2-Plus Subwoofer
dhsspeakerservice.com/ -
Those (in an appropriately sized enclosure) plus the great knob of deliciousness... And tubes...= Magic.
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Stupid but true story.
The OTA TV broadcasting in Baltimore was (maybe still is? I dunno) centered on a tall "candelebra" tower located on a hill near Druid Hill Park and the city zoo (known in Bawlmerese as "Droodle Park") & the Hampden neighborhood in the city of Baltimore. All three of the network stations had their broadcast facilities there, and their studios nearby. The area was thus known as "TV Hill".
One of those stations, WBAL, was allied with an AM radio station, WBAL-AM. WBAL-AM broadcasts at 1090 kHz, a 50 kW "clear channel" station heard over most of the northeast (and other places, too) at night.
WBAL used to describe their studio location (on or near "TV Hill") as "Radio Knob".
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That facility still exists and is in operation. I pull digital OTA channels from there.
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I figured it was but I haven't been down that-a-ways for a while.
Heck, my father, a TV repair person, used to buy parts from a distributor in the shadow of that big ol' tower (Kann-Ellert Electronics). They're long gone.
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mhardy6647 wrote: »Heck, my father, a TV repair person, used to buy parts from a distributor in the shadow of that big ol' tower (Kann-Ellert Electronics). They're long gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5cneCgNA9U
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That's funny, I'd been looking at those a while back, as I'd tried unsuccessfully to make a Fostex 6 1/2" full range speaker system before, but just couldn't handle the midrange honk that came from those drivers.
I had a friend who made some nice one's out of the 8" Fostex drivers, but they were the size of a small refridgerator !
I had to resign myself to the fact that I just don't have the room for a propper full range set up. -
some of the Fostexes are more pierce-y than others.
IF (if!?!) you can find a pair of the discontinued FE-207E drivers, they're better behaved than some of the Fostexes and will perform adequately in a small BR box. Barely, but adequately.
DSC_5663 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
(dang, I wish this room still was that clean and spare!)
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Id be glad to take some of the "junk" that has taken residence in that room for you... As an act of good will to get back the the clean and sparse state as seen in the picture.
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That must have been move in day. I can't ever recall seeing your room that empty!
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I disabled signatures.
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some of the Fostexes are more pierce-y than others.
IF (if!?!) you can find a pair of the discontinued FE-207E drivers, they're better behaved than some of the Fostexes and will perform adequately in a small BR box. Barely, but adequately.
I kind of like to mess around with old 4" full range drivers when I get the urge.
Usually I'll run into a pair of 70's Radio Shack Solo 1's at a tag sale and buy them for the banana pulp Foster drivers, with the little screened hole in the center cap.
I've dropped those drivers into many donor boxes (like an old pair of Minimus 7's for example).
Someone once gave me a pair of Mirage Omnisat egg shaped speakers that he'd blown and I stuck a pair of those drivers in there and removed the tweeter, creating full range holographic sound rear channels that actually sounded great with my Polk Monitor 5's !
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The drivers of which you speak are - presumably - OEM versions of the venerable (and still in production) Fostex FE-103. The AlNiCo magnet versions have a particular cachet.
You probably knew all of that
Did you ever try the ol' Damar (or, as some would have it, Dammar) varnish damping technique on the paper cone, ceramic magnet descendants of those drivers (i.e., the R/S 40-1197 4" FR drivers)?
On this topic
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and FWIW...
my favorite-est cheap driver ever were the Pioneer-branded OEM 4" FR drivers sold for some while on clearance by PartsExpress under their part number 269-469. These drivers became known in some circles as the "69 cent wonders because, towards the end, that was their going price. They are phenomenally good sounding little drivers, top to bottom (no kidding).
I wish I'd have bought more of them when they were around. I still have... a few
but not as many as I wish I would.
DSC_7032 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSC_7031 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
Our son built these in high school as part of a science fair project
269-469BR by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSC_5788b by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
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heh -- you got me goin'...
http://ratch-h.com/69centwonder.html
http://ratch-h.com/farm.html
a proud young woman and her loudspeaker(s):
I did, one warm summer day years back, and just for shoots and Googles, build a pair of 1 x 8 open baffle line arrays with these drivers. They sounded... interesting.
A Bessel array might be a better way to go.
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Oh to have that much real estate !
It's probably a good thing that I live in a small apartment, because there's no little woman to tell me NO when I find stray speakers that want to come home with me. -
@mhardy6647mhardy6647 wrote: »I figured it was but I haven't been down that-a-ways for a while.
Heck, my father, a TV repair person, used to buy parts from a distributor in the shadow of that big ol' tower (Kann-Ellert Electronics). They're long gone.
We lost our last hold-out of a real electronics store in Baltimore last turn of the year:
https://www.facebook.com/Baynesville-Electronics-109976629042766/
Gonna miss that place, and real people with know-howc, and just poking around at all the niftys.
We still have lots of Arrows and the like around, but that's more construction and industrial and half of them wouldn't know a discrete component if it bit em... -
Towson! That's where John Waters is from.
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Went to high school in Towson (well, nominally Towson... close by, at any rate).
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mhardy6647 wrote: »Went to high school in Towson (well, nominally Towson... close by, at any rate).
You weren't there when that nun was murdered, were you?
