Where's a good place to get replacement drivers?

comfortablycurt

I've got a couple of old RCA floorstanding speaker cabs that I'm trying to get going again to use with an old Fisher 2 channel receiver that I've got. I hadn't even looked at the speakers in a while, and it turns out that one of the tweeters is shot.

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good place to get replacement drivers? I removed it, and the mounting plate it's on is 3 7/8", with a 3" hole opening.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Curt

treitz3

Good morning. Many folks here have had great success with Parts Express.

heiney9

Parts Express

also a little closer to our neck of the woods

Madisound

Merry Christmas

mhardy6647

yup, those are the two places I'd go first; you have been given good advice :-)

comfortablycurt

Cool, I'll check those places out. Thanks for the suggestions.

comfortablycurt

I had a couple other questions now, because I'm thinking about upgrading the woofers too. These speakers don't have a crossover...the way it's wired is through the input, and to the woofer. From the woofer there is a second set of terminals going out to the tweeter. There's a little capacitor on the positive lead going to the tweeter...which I assume is a low pass filter.

Should I put a crossover in them? I was looking at them on parts express and they're not that expensive. If so...where should I cross it over at?

Here's the tweeter I found. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=270-018&ctab=14#Tabs

Here are the woofers I was looking at. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-324

Thanks a lot for the help!
Curt

mhardy6647

The woofer's running free, with a first-order XO to the tweeter.

comfortablycurt

mhardy6647 wrote: »

The woofer's running free, with a first-order XO to the tweeter.

Should I stick with that setup or would I be better off going with a different kind?

If I were to stick with that setup, I don't think those woofers I posted would work...they appear to only have one pair of terminals. So that wouldn't work would it?

In which case I was also looking at these woofers, which do have two pairs of terminals. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-088

mhardy6647

Take a look at the first order XO schematic; it is very simple. The input leads (+ and -) go to the woofer; the tweeter is wired in parallel to the woofer, with a nonpolarized capacitor in series with one leg (usually +) going to the tweeter. The cap is thus a "high pass" filter.

Not sure why there are "two pairs of terminals" on the woofer. How old is old, in this case? Is the woofer, perhaps, a coaxial driver with two voice coils (woofer and tweeter) in one basket? Such drivers (sometimes) have two pairs of terminals.

Any chance of posting a photo of the woofer?

Here is a first order crossover. THis is a "full" first order crossover, with an inductor (choke, or coil) on the woofer to act as a low-pass filter, and a capacitor on the tweeter to act as a high-pass filter. Your speakers, I assume, have no coil on the woofer; only the HF crossover cap.





EDIT: OK, I looked at the photo in your earlier post. Having one, or two, sets of terminal connections on a woofer such as you showed in your earlier post is simply a convenience to the builder/designer; You can use a woofer with a single spade connector on each terminal and just hook two wires to each to parallel the tweeter connection to the woofer. If your current speaker's wires use spade lugs (connectors), you can just snip 'em off and solder the connections to the terminals on the woofer. Don't use too much heat or heat for too long if you solder; you can damage the voice coil with too much heat.

EDIT^2: Did you look at this page at PE? http://www.parts-express.com/resources/speaker-replacement.cfm

comfortablycurt

Here are a couple pictures of the terminals on the woofers. Are these spade connectors? Or are they something else?

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Here's a picture of the back of the tweeter, which has the same connections.

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Here's a picture of the input terminals on the back of the speaker cab. Do they make connectors for this kind of input? Should I maybe upgrade to some 5-way binding posts?

[IMG][/img]



Thanks for that last link there. I didn't see that page when I was on their site earlier. It answered a lot of the questions I had though.

Do you think I should stick with the crossover setup that's in there now, or should I upgrade to a 2-way crossover like one of these ones?

If I stick with the same one, should I replace it? Or should the current one be fine?

Sorry I'm asking so many questions...I just wanna make sure that I do the job right, so I don't do something wrong and end up being unhappy with my end results.

Thanks for your help.
Curt

comfortablycurt

So...I think I can use spade connectors on those screw terminals on the back...am I right in thinking this? I was thinking about upgrading to 5-way binding posts...but if I can use spades on these I'm not gonna go through the trouble of upgrading...I'll just use the spades.

I've decided that I am gonna go with the first speakers that I posted up. They seem to be the best match for the cabinets, and the closest to original as possible.

Here's the woofer I'm looking at.

And here's the tweeter.

I think the only question I really have left is whether or not to upgrade the crossover. I was looking at this crossover here. It would be simple enough to install...it'd require a little bit more wiring, but nothing that I wouldn't be able to manage. Is it worth the extra effort though, or am I not really gaining anything by changing?

I'm thinking I'll probably just end up staying with the setup it has now, just to simplify things.

From the looks of it I'm gonna be able to replace the woofers and tweeters in both cabinets for a little less than a hundred bucks. I can't wait to hear what they sound like with new drivers in them. Hopefully I'll get them ordered here in another couple weeks though.

clearwave

comfortablycurt wrote: »

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Curt

They guys at madisound are great. Give them the specs of what you need and they should be able to help or point you in the right direction.