I continue on the team to pick up a few different (classics?) two-way speakers with a relatively large bass driver and tweeter without a waveguide. I'm including some pictures because pictures are always fun.
The Dynaco A25XL you mention seems to be a classic. So much so that it has its own thread here on ASR:
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I was just given a pair of early seventies Dynaco A-25 speakers, and am wondering if folks have experience with them? How would they stack up vs newer designs in the past 50 years-- will they hold up? Thanks
audiosciencereview.com
Speakers with variations on the team 8 inch bass and 1 inch tweeter. Mostly British stuff so DSJR (who also sold speakers) and you others from the British Isles are welcome to add information, or correct me if I'm wrong.
JPW P1. Vifa drives, both bass and tweeter. Here are a couple that are now with my parents.
(sorry I'm a bad photographer, poor sharpness in the picture).
JPW P1:
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Pretty cool speakers, those JPW P1s, I must say. The bird that couldn't fly because there's actually a 3/4 inch tweeter in them (VIFA D19TD-05-08) +
8 inch bass driver (VIFA M21WG-09-08).It shouldn't work but is fun speakers nonetheless. Light thin walls, resonances, little bass in the lower registers and probably wacko off axes on probably on axes relatively bad as well (maybe I'll measure that some day) but despite that a couple of fun speakers. The stands they stand on are made for Heybrook HB1 speakers. Sharp spikes on the stands that can cut into the speakers, what the hell were the designers of them thinking with those destroyers for spikes?
Heybrook HB1, same bass as in JPW P1 if I remember correctly, that is VIFA M21WG-09-08.
Heybrook HB1:
View attachment 366097
Another classic combination 8 inch bass 1 inch tweeter is the variant of bass driver B200 and tweeter t27 that KEF made in different models. The t27 tweeter is also available Rogers LS3/5A (don't buy a new variant of them, unnecessarily expensive for rather mediocre or poor performance).
Here KEF Cadenza without speaker grills. The B200 + t27 and a passive radiator. I had a pair of Cadenzas a couple of years ago. I thought they were ok.
KEF Cadenza:
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QRS 500, as I mentioned earlier in the thread. Sweden's "folk speaker" with Vifa 8 inch bass and Vifa 1 inch tweeter.
QRS 500:
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Speaking of DIY, I know a person who just now started a project to mount a Somasonus WG with SB26ADC-C000-4 tweeter in a pair of QRS500. Well, maybe it can be good. The speaker boxes themselves are ok. I know nothing about the quality of the bass driver. Maybe it can be reasonably good speakers, with the right type of crossover, that is. I'll see if he gets them together and shows them at a vintage DIY fair I usually go to.
(he has 3d printer and the SB tweeters plus a couple of QRS500 he doesn't use now so why not try it, was his reasoning)
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www.somasonus.net
There are probably lots of similar variants of 8 inch bass and 1 inch tweeter speakers in other countries. It seems to have been a popular concept in the 1970s up until a bit into the 1990s.
Edit:
For those who are thinking of buying one of the speakers mentioned above with Vifa bass, it is not a matter of if but when the edges rot away. If it hasn't been done recently, it should be redone (as I did with my parents' JPW P1):
2 x 8
www.repairyourspeakers.com
