Pazos Speakers? Anyone know ANYTHING?

[psarahtonen]

Does anyone know ANYTHING about Pazos Speakers?

I'm still dialing these in with stuffing and I need to rebuild the crossover as soon as I get some specs from someone. I don't even have a model number or country of origin! In fact the only reason I think they are made by a mysterious company called Pazos is because of the badge. Apart from that I got nothin.

They image very very well and Audyssey maps them pretty flat except for the 16K which is dull from dry capacitors.

Dome Tweeter- Philips Alnico
Dome Mid- Jensen Alnico
Full Range 10" (I know... that's weird but that's how it's wired)- CTS Alnico
Woofer 10"- CTS Alnico

Basketball for scale reference.

Help me Obi Wan. You're my only hope.
View attachment 1284234

 

[swechsler]

Are the crossover component values unreadable? That's how we usually rebuild them here on AK; we don't have schematics for most speakers.

 

[gdmoore28]

Those are some nice-looking speakers. I hope they sound as good as they look.

It's amazing how many companies have tried their hand at manufacturing speakers. It would probably be impossible to do a complete listing of them all.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[swechsler]

If you've ever read Audio magazine back when they used to publish their Annual Equipment Directory, you'd have seen that the speaker section dwarfed all others.

Many issues are available online (the Directory appeared in the October issue, starting some time in the 1970s).

 

[gdmoore28]

If you've ever read Audio magazine back when they used to publish their Annual Equipment Directory, you'd have seen that the speaker section dwarfed all others.

Many issues are available online (the Directory appeared in the October issue, starting some time in the 1970s).

Yep, I remember those.

I used to read all the audio magazines until it dawned on me that (a)the speaker reviewers had simply run out of superlatives to describe speaker characteristics, (b)I would never have the chance to hear the majority of speakers that they reviewed, and (c)I would never be able to afford said speakers even if I had the chance to audition them.

It took me many more years to eventually decide the same kind of things about motorcycle and classic car magazines.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[psarahtonen]

Are the crossover component values unreadable? That's how we usually rebuild them here on AK; we don't have schematics for most speakers.

I can't get the XO values as the the XO I found in them are the RadioShack "Universal 4-way Crossover" module. They just have some stock/standard points like 6500 3200 2000 800.. something like that.

That said, one speaker is wired full range... the top 10" woofer from CTS. But that may be someone's screw up.

I have a Warfedale Rosedale 3-way XO, a JBL S38 3-way and maybe some others that I might just throw in and see what happens as a starting point. I just wish I had SOME shred of info to go with.

Thanks!

 

[psarahtonen]

If you've ever read Audio magazine back when they used to publish their Annual Equipment Directory, you'd have seen that the speaker section dwarfed all others.

Many issues are available online (the Directory appeared in the October issue, starting some time in the 1970s).

Thanks but it seems Google would have crawled all of that info with some pretty high relevance already. But when I Google "Pazos+speakers" or anything related like "Pazos 3-way" I only get seminars where someone named Pazos is speaking and some references to spanish porn.

 

[NicholasG]

Those Jensen dome mids/tweeters are excellent tweeters. Have three pairs of Jensen Speakers with those in them, but they are used as tweeters. Cant recall where I read this at but, I remember reading somewhere that speaker manufacturers used them as Mids and they ended up frying them.

 

[swechsler]

Thanks but it seems Google would have crawled all of that info with some pretty high relevance already. But when I Google "Pazos+speakers" or anything related like "Pazos 3-way" I only get seminars where someone named Pazos is speaking and some references to spanish porn.

This was more in response to GDM's comment about the number of speaker manufacturers. I don't think Google has indexed (or at least indexed well) the Audio directories, though, since I've never had them come up in search results for a piece of equipment. Even when I direct a search to that site, it doesn't seem to find directory listings (although it is able to locate other articles within the Audio magazines archived there).

 

[toxcrusadr]

Too bad about the crossovers. If you can't find a schematic or even an original speaker to reverse engineer a schematic from, about the only way is to completely re-design it from scratch using driver impedance curves. Might be easier to just do some response and impedance curves as it sits now and tweak any bad spots in the response by modding the existing crossovers.

Any date codes on the drivers?

 

[psarahtonen]

Any date codes on the drivers?

Not any I have been able to decode uniformly across all four speakers. One of the two CTS speakers may have Dec '74 date. CTS Model 10W14C "code 7449" The other 137 CTS 10" code I can't decipher unless it is 4 years older... "5810190 137 7049D"

I think I'll borrow a friend's active crossover and dial in some frequencies and then build from there. The one driver running full range has me so confused tho.

 

[sax6]

It's amazing how many companies have tried their hand at manufacturing speakers. It would probably be impossible to do a complete listing of them all.

GeeDeeEmm

That is exactly what I oftenly think.
So many speakers to snatch and listen to !

 

[toxcrusadr]

I like the active crossover idea.

Are the two woofers identical and one has a crossover and the other doesn't?

 

[psarahtonen]

I like the active crossover idea.

Are the two woofers identical and one has a crossover and the other doesn't?

Thanks.. No. They are two different CTS models.

I just tried crossing them over together low pass at 800 and I lost a ton of 2.5K-400. The original speaker and the modded speaker are both measuring 4 Ohms. Maybe there's a wiring path with the full range that gets it closer to 8 Ohms.

I'll try wiring the CTS Model #5810190 full range and see if I get back to sounding more like the original. That just doesn't make any sense tho. I've never seen a full range running in parallel with a 3-way cluster.

I wish I had some shred of reference to work with.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Two woofers are sometimes run differently, usually when that's done one of them goes all the way down and the other comes in higher. In any case you ask a good question about the upper one running into the same range as the mids. It will roll off naturally as woofers do but obviously will go well into the midrange before it craps out. Would be interesting to look at response curves for all the drivers separately.

I have a pair of Atlantic 4-ways that have the upper midrange limited on its lower end by the crossover but running wide open on the upper end. I assume it falls off on a curve that mated pretty well with the tweeter.

Designers (or the bean counters who approved the designs!) often did the opposite, i.e. minimize drivers and stretch them to cover the whole spectrum, rather than having multiple drivers covering short intervals or overlapping in a big way. OTOH that's exactly what Kabuki speakers are.

 

[swechsler]

I think the most unusual feature of this design (assume it is actually a design and not a ransom collection of drivers) is the sharing of the same cavity by two different types of drivers. Even doing this today, having access to T/S parameters, would be extremely difficult. Back when this was apparently made, it would have taken a huge amount of trial and error.

It's true that some speaker designers use multiples of the same driver and run them at different ranges (I have a pair of Celestion Dittons that do that). But I've never seen anything like this done by an actual designer (since the original crossovers are gone, it's going to pretty difficult to determine how it was supposed to work).

 

[psarahtonen]

I think the most unusual feature of this design (assume it is actually a design and not a ransom collection of drivers) is the sharing of the same cavity by two different types of drivers. Even doing this today, having access to T/S parameters, would be extremely difficult. Back when this was apparently made, it would have taken a huge amount of trial and error.

It's true that some speaker designers use multiples of the same driver and run them at different ranges (I have a pair of Celestion Dittons that do that). But I've never seen anything like this done by an actual designer (since the original crossovers are gone, it's going to pretty difficult to determine how it was supposed to work).

That doesn't sound encouraging. But, on a + note, they don't sound terrible right now. I just know that they should sound better and less murky. They get really low and pretty high untouched. I'm wondering now if all of they're strange imaging quality comes from the stands they are on, and I'm getting some E.Rs off the floor or something. Anyway...

I'll try to throw the drivers onto Room EQ Wizard and see if I can understand their purpose better. I just have to keep my family quiet, air conditioner off and dogs from barking in my super-scientific audio reference lab wile testing!

More to come! Thanks all!

 

[toxcrusadr]

Now we're all curious. Maybe some day another pair will show up with original crossovers.

 

[psarahtonen]

Pazos Model ____? UPDATE:OK... I pulled driver leads wires to the outside of the box and put them all on a screw terminal board. I've been playing around with several different XOs and wiring. I put an old Wharfedale Rosedale 3-way crossover on one and left the "original" speaker (probably modified original) for comparison. A Technics SB-7000 XO sounded great but I'm not smart enough to rebuild one of thoseic below)

They sound amazing! Rich and full with plenty of clean highs now. I need to adjust the amount of stuffing to get a little of the nasal quality out. That's easy.

I happen to be borrowing a pair of Bohlender-Graebner X3 and put one of them in place of the "original". Range-wise they sound very similar. The BGs have that amazing "air" around the highs that is specific to them though and the Pazos were a little bit muddier.

But the new problem... to get them to sound this good the speaker is now dry measuring at 3.2 Ohms so it's probably dipping lower than that at times. The original was measuring 11 Ohms. Not sure how to fix that.

I'll poke around Parts Connexion today and find some fresh capacitors to put on the Warfedale XO and see of some of the muddiness cleans up. The XOs have a mid and high attenuator on them that I basically have wide open so I'll probably bypass those. Here's the pics

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[toxcrusadr]

3.2 ohms, is that DC resistance at the inputs? If so the impedance is actually higher most likely. Also you're basically measuring the woofer only since other drivers usually have a cap in series.