Econowave'd Pioneer HPM-40 speakers

Note: I am brutally cheap/frugal. There are many compromises here, but I'm happy.

I always liked these speakers, but the cone tweeters just grated on me. I had the tweeter level controls turned down quite a bit and liked them a lot, but I knew that quality highs would transform them.

It all started with a pair of used DH200 Selenium drivers I bought off of ebay. They came with Selenium HM17-25 horns. I mocked up an EW crossover with junkbox parts and set them on my New Large Advents. I was convinced! This was discussed in the EW thread starting here:

At that point I committed to buying the right stuff for the NLAs, and recently did.

But that left the DH-200 drivers and HM17-25 horns with no purpose.

One day I put the horn up to the HPM-40s and saw that they would fit in the speaker envelope. So I committed to do these as well. To motivate myself, I sold the stock HPM tweeters.

In the meantime I found that I had these Dayton WGs laying around and once I saw how well they fit this speaker, I had to do it.

<months go by>

Well the weather is nice today, and this kind of work has to be done outside, so I did it. This stuff had been sitting around too long and needed to be DONE.

The HPM-40 woofers are very forgiving in the midrange. They only have a coil in the stock crossover (no cap, 6db/octave) for the woofer, and they play well with the other drivers. I never had a complaint about the woofer's sound.

I needed to enlarge the stock tweeter hole so the Dayton WG would sit flat. A sabre saw took care of that.

I left the stock HPM low pass section for the woofer and high pass for the super tweeter intact on the stock xover. I used the Econowave crossover boards with their inputs paralled with the the stock xover board's inputs. I then just screwed the EW board to the inside of the back panel.

The DH200 driver is lacking in the top octave. Maybe the stock Pioneer Supertweeter can make up for that.

In the future I will remove the EW boards and just build up the compression driver components onto the stock xover board. This is so I can retrieve the EW xover boards from these cabinets for use in my New Large Advents.

I'm too cheap to buy L-Pads, and found that an 8 ohm resistor across the tweeter set the highs where I like it most of the time. I just solder this on the back of the EW xover board.

Since I now have the D220ti drivers, (ordered for the NLAs) I will try them in these speakers in the future just for comparison.

Parts used:
HPM-40
Selenium DH-200 drivers
Dayton H07E 6" by 6" elliptical WG 270-316 from Parts Express.
EW crossovers, but only using the high pass parts.

Somebody needs to do HPM-60s or 100s. Both the HPM-40s and HPM-60s are cheap on the used market, and are great candidates for EWaving!

I got the drivers and WGs cheap, so this conversion was pretty inexpensive. But now that I've heard this setup, I would gladly spend the money to do it with the D220ti drivers. These speakers sound a LOT better!

The dispersion is amazing. This waveguide stuff is for real! The CD crossover makes it all possible!

TNKS AK and Zlich!

Top octave issue?

First that looks cool. I have a set of 40's and 100's, but there is no way I'm doing this to the 100's.

You mention attaching the DH network to the HPM network. I'm wondering if that is the issue since the DH must have it's own electronics and the HPM has it's own and you've essentially defeated the DH circuitry, to some degree. I would think you would want to hook directly to the main posts for optimum performance. You could still gain, possibly, from using the ST as well.

If I missed something or got confused, sorry, but thought if I did understand correctly you need to, in a sense, bypass the HPM circuitry.

The top octave issue is completely about the driver. Nothing else.

That IS how it is wired. The input to the EW xover board is soldered to the speaker inputs.

The stock tweeter xover components (a coil and a cap) have been removed.

The stock woofer and supertweeter xover components remain and are active.

The EW low pass xover is not used or even active.

I would considering doing my HPM-100s. There's even more opportunity for the EW qualities to shine in that speaker. I bought mine back before they were worth $500 though...

DCinDC said:

The top octave issue is completely about the driver. Nothing else.

That IS how it is wired. The input to the EW xover board is soldered to the speaker inputs.

The stock tweeter xover components (a coil and a cap) have been removed.

The stock woofer and supertweeter xover components remain and are active.

The EW low pass xover is not used or even active.

I would considering doing my HPM-100s. There's even more opportunity for the EW qualities to shine in that speaker. I bought mine back before they were worth $500 though...

Click to expand...

According to the link you provided that driver is good to 20khz so not sure why you would detect an issue. Maybe used to the highs of the HPM's? Maybe something else? I'm curious if the straight signal is the issue. Any reason why you chose not to use the HPM tweeter (not ST) connection? Seems like that would be a suitable crossover point and allow a transition into the ST.

Copa1934 said:

According to the link you provided that driver is good to 20khz so not sure why you would detect an issue.

Click to expand...

The 220ti compression driver used in the Econowave has flat response to 20k. My comments were in comparison to that driver vs my D200 drivers which are 10db down at 10k, then rise back up to 6db for most of the octave.

Maybe used to the highs of the HPM's? Maybe something else? I'm curious if the straight signal is the issue.

Click to expand...

What highs of the HPM? The driver is the issue, trust me. But it was significantly cheaper than the D220ti driver.

AGAIN the crossover drive is NOT the problem.

Any reason why you chose not to use the HPM tweeter (not ST) connection?

Click to expand...

The whole EW thing is dependent on the crossover giving a rising response for the CD horn. That's why I didn't use the stock tweeter xover.

Seems like that would be a suitable crossover point and allow a transition into the ST.

Click to expand...

It's not at all a suitable xover point for the Econowave HF. The ST still works, it has it's own xover STILL INTACT.

DCinDC said:

The 220ti compression driver used in the Econowave has flat response to 20k. My comments were in comparison to that driver vs my D200 drivers which are 10db down at 10k, then rise back up to 6db for most of the octave.



What highs of the HPM? The driver is the issue, trust me. But it was significantly cheaper than the D220ti driver.

AGAIN the crossover drive is NOT the problem.



The whole EW thing is dependent on the crossover giving a rising response for the CD horn. That's why I didn't use the stock tweeter xover.



It's not at all a suitable xover point for the Econowave HF. The ST still works, it has it's own xover STILL INTACT.

Click to expand...

My bad, I misunderstood the post as wanting feedback. I've thought about eWaves for some time but haven't found the time due to too many other projects. Those horns make the 40's a tad meaner looking by comparison to factory drivers. It's quite surprising the performance from those 10" woofers.

I think that HPM 40/60/100 series of Pioneer woofer drivers are awesome. Good mod!

For a comparison, I put the Selenium 220ti drivers in them.

Clearly, it's a better sounding driver. It's smoother, and just sounds more accurate, which it is.

The 200 is nice, but the 220ti just makes it better. It's worth the $15 difference over the 220ti's cost, each. I got convinced.

That said, the HPM40s have a bump at 125 hz which makes them nice to listen to pop and rock music. And the DH200 drivers have a pleasing midrange forward-ness that compliments this, so they're eventually going back in. Go figure!

These speakers will now spank most vintage speakers and a lot of expensive new ones too!

edit: my dog didn't like being in the room when these were playing. I disconnected the super tweeters, with no audible difference.

Recently I:
- swapped the DH200 drivers back in
- removed the Zilch crossover boards with the low pass components on them and replaced them with new Zilch boards I got that I only populated with the high pass components. I am using the stock HPM low pass part of the stock xover.
- wired up the stock hpm L pad to the zilch xover
- sold off the super tweeters and their drive transformers. Just need to make some plates to fill the cutouts.

I've had some time to listen to them now. Wow, they just really sound terrific! I'd put em up against anything in this size (10" woofer) class.

I bought another pair of these woofers and I'm gong to build stupid stout cabinets for them, and do this again!