EV interface 2, a story and pix...

Quick story... About a year ago my dad, knowing I was into audio called me from a garage sale. "Hey, I see some speakers here, the brand is EV and the guy selling them says they sound real good, $20 and they are yours. They have two big woofers and a tweeter." hum.... sounds good. A few weeks later he is over and says he has the speakers with him. I'm excited with anticipation and when he opens the truck I tried not to laugh to insult him. I see to little ugly speakers with silicone surrounds. Crap. They are called Interface 2's. Robust 8"woofer, paper cone tweeter and a 10" passive radiator. I stuff them in the closet expecting to some day throw them out. Well yesterday I was cleaning out said closet and looked at these. I thought what the hell, I'll refoam them and toss in some dome tweeters I have laying around. Boy I'm I glad I did. These things surprisingly sound GREAT. Very clean and well balanced. I really like them and I have lots of nice speakers so I know what good speakers sound like. They don't go super low but that 8" driver is very good and really full range. With the passive extending it and the tweeter which sounds great in there adds nice top end these things really sound nice. Totally unexpected. Very detailed and good with vocals. Other than filing out the tweeter hole a little for the large magnets the tweeters fit perfect and look stock. Blend very well and are balanced. I could not be happier with the end result. Sometimes you just luck out. I think I am liking these better than my very similar Genesis II's.

scary silicone surrounds...



They had put some material and then siliconed it. Inventive and impossible to remove without ruining the cone. I had had to leave some of the silicone on the passive.



Woofer refoamed



Big magnet, robust driver



One done and the drivers for the other one...



All done

Interesting smaller brother of my ElectroVoice Interface A's, apparently. Must be a later series... they used a different tweeter in the earlier models, and the passive in that one is smaller than the earlier ones, too...

Regards,
Gordon.

GordonW said:

Interesting smaller brother of my ElectroVoice Interface A's, apparently. Must be a later series... they used a different tweeter in the earlier models, and the passive in that one is smaller than the earlier ones, too...

Regards,
Gordon.

Click to expand...

Somewhere I have a brochure for the Interface series. The 1,2 and 3 were the "basic" models with the A,B,C, and D being the higher end ones. They were around from the very late 1970s until the eraly 1980s I believe - I think I heard the Cs or Ds at Stellar Stereo and they were impressive with their bass response.

GordonW said:

Interesting smaller brother of my ElectroVoice Interface A's, apparently. Must be a later series... they used a different tweeter in the earlier models

Click to expand...

As a point of clarification these were originally equipped with what look like Peerless paper cone tweeters. One had been replaced with some crappy Piezo so I swapped both out for some soft domes I had. Amazingly they sound great and blend perfectly with the attenuator slightly backed off.

I have been listening to them more this morning on another system in a bigger room and am amazed that these simple little speakers sound so good. That's a good 8" driver. I would love to see how that thing measures by it self in a cab. I bet it does well at both ends. Not full range but close. It is not crossed and allowed to run full range which it does smoothly. The passive adds to the bass extension and the tweeter add to top. If you attenuate the tweeter to nearly off it still holds up pretty well.

Just found this on the web, is this an A? Is that the stock tweeter? Looks like I was accidentally on the right track with putting the dome tweets in there...

- Gordon, are your A's and 8" driver with a 12" passive?

Yep, 8" woofer, 12" passive, 2" cone tweeter on front (and one on the back too).

Regards,
Gordon.

GordonW said:

Yep, 8" woofer, 12" passive, 2" cone tweeter on front (and one on the back too).

Regards,
Gordon.

Click to expand...

Interesting. So the ones in the pic I posted above must have had the tweeters replaced as well.

I can't see the picture you posted... but, the later-mode Interface A and B had a 1.5" phenolic-dome tweeter, stock... the crossover was naturally a bit different, tuned to the new tweeter design...

Regards,
Gordon.

Pretty cool. :thmbsp: I have a pair of EVM-12Ls, most commonly used in guitar amps, that sound surprisingly good by themselves, without any tweeter. They also don't really need to be mounted in a baffle or enclosure to sound good, which sounds kinda weird, but it's true. I probably "should" pass these along to someone who would get better use out of them, but some drivers ya just want to hang onto, for some unknown future use. :yes:

kfa888 said:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/NatureLand-Sky/1767/speakers/inta-3.jpg

Click to expand...

That pic still doesn't work. I'm getting a page (it's in Japanese) that looks suspiciously like the Geocities "boilerplate" page saying that someone has exceeded their bandwidth (and to "try back later")...

Regards,
Gordon.

What dome tweeter did you use? I have a pair of Interface II Series 2 with the 1.5" tweeters Gordon mentioned (5.5" faceplate covered with damping foam) and both drivers are dead. The original tweeters pop up on eb-ay but that would be money poorly spent considering how they seem to be especially fragile.

The manual for the Interface B (which is very similar, and uses the same "Superdome" 1.5" dome tweeter) lists a 1500 Hz crossover point.

As for tweeter replacement- I THINK that EV still has diaphragms available for those. Might be worth contacting EV...

Regards,
Gordon.