uxwbill
Lurking in the Shadows
So I was out and about today, idly cruising around and checking a few of the local "thrift" and bric-a-brac stores. Most of the time, these places don't have anything too interesting...the thrift stores almost never have stereo equipment (not even "BPC" stuff) and the bric-a-brac stores have a lot of forgettable things like 3 watt "full range" single driver department store stereo speakers or incomplete HTIB speaker sets.
Buried in the back of this one bric-a-brac store, in amongst busted up guitar amplifiers, little practice amps, forgotten/mistreated records, crap and a school style record player are these just-visible lattice grilles...could they be "real" speakers?
A closer look revealed a set of Realistic NOVA-6 speakers in pretty good shape. Dusty and forgotten, but intact. I couldn't get the grilles off to inspect the drivers, so I asked the price. $10? Might be worth the risk...the owner said he'd played a 200 watt amplifier into them and it got so loud he couldn't stand it. That's not an encouraging thing to hear when the speakers say "40 watts maximum".
I checked here very quickly and found this thread.
As the place was pretty crowded, I hurried back with $10 and the hope that they'd still be there. Got 'em home, cleaned them up a bit and unscrewed the grille covers. For the most part, it was good news all around. The surrounds on both drivers appear to be as good as new. It doesn't seem like the substance used is the typical subject-to-rotting foam.
A listening test in the garage with a Technics SA-120 seemed to indicate that the drivers weren't blown, but there was a definite phasing problem with the right speaker...just like the ones mentioned in the other thread. I swapped the wires on the back of that speaker and things were much better. I wonder if this was the result of a mistake at the speaker factory?
I'd say they're pretty decent. The treble is weak even though both tweeters appear to work. I haven't serviced the crossover or even inspected it yet. It may help to do that.
Determining the phasing for the woofer and correcting it should be easy enough. How can it be done for a tweeter?
Buried in the back of this one bric-a-brac store, in amongst busted up guitar amplifiers, little practice amps, forgotten/mistreated records, crap and a school style record player are these just-visible lattice grilles...could they be "real" speakers?
A closer look revealed a set of Realistic NOVA-6 speakers in pretty good shape. Dusty and forgotten, but intact. I couldn't get the grilles off to inspect the drivers, so I asked the price. $10? Might be worth the risk...the owner said he'd played a 200 watt amplifier into them and it got so loud he couldn't stand it. That's not an encouraging thing to hear when the speakers say "40 watts maximum".
I checked here very quickly and found this thread.
As the place was pretty crowded, I hurried back with $10 and the hope that they'd still be there. Got 'em home, cleaned them up a bit and unscrewed the grille covers. For the most part, it was good news all around. The surrounds on both drivers appear to be as good as new. It doesn't seem like the substance used is the typical subject-to-rotting foam.
A listening test in the garage with a Technics SA-120 seemed to indicate that the drivers weren't blown, but there was a definite phasing problem with the right speaker...just like the ones mentioned in the other thread. I swapped the wires on the back of that speaker and things were much better. I wonder if this was the result of a mistake at the speaker factory?
I'd say they're pretty decent. The treble is weak even though both tweeters appear to work. I haven't serviced the crossover or even inspected it yet. It may help to do that.
Determining the phasing for the woofer and correcting it should be easy enough. How can it be done for a tweeter?
