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Realistic Solo 1 and Project 60 speakers?

savv

savv

Super Member
Anyone have any experiences with Realistic Solo 1 speakers? They appear to have the 60s look and are bookshelf type. Couldn't pry out the grills.

How about Project 60? They have the Pioneer name on them. Couldn't pry out grills as well.

Are these any good?
 
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I have a couple pairs of Solo 103's, 4" full range driver with beige cone and sealed acoustic suspension cabinet, I'm not familiar with the Solo 1, Dave. :yes:
 
Savv- I'll embarrasingly admit I got a pair in the basement- but as yet haven't listened to them. I think it was MRH who said that it was probably a fostex driver inside. My guess would be Dgwojo's 103s are very similar. One of my recent gw finds had grills with itty bitty screws holding them on- take a peek at yours. Or maybe it was another find :dunno: I will bet they sound pretty sweet-mark
 
elvisluvs said:
Savv- I'll embarrasingly admit I got a pair in the basement- but as yet haven't listened to them. I think it was MRH who said that it was probably a fostex driver inside. My guess would be Dgwojo's 103s are very similar. One of my recent gw finds had grills with itty bitty screws holding them on- take a peek at yours. Or maybe it was another find :dunno: I will bet they sound pretty sweet-mark
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Elvisluvs,

How about posting pics of your Solo 1? Curious as to how they look inside.
Thanks.

Savv
 
My beater pair of 103's was available for pics, my mint ones are packed away with their spare drivers. The backs unscrew on these, the grills are fixed in place, Dave.

:worthless
 

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Re: The Solo 103's.
Depending on what year they were made, you may find your cabinets have the ALNICO version of the FE-103's (F-103). Those were my first pair of speakers back in 1969. As I recall, they half powered (-3dB) at 90Hz and went up to around 18kHz.
 
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OH! Plug those damn RCA jacks up! They create an air leak which causes the cabinet to unload (the bass response suffers). (Use unterminated RCA plugs.)
 
Solo 1 may be an electrostatic speaker. My memory is that in 1958 Consumers
Reports top choice was an AR1 speaker with a Solo1 for the high end. I could be wrong
about that but there should be an ac cord for the Solo1 power supply if it is an
electrostatic unit.
 
re: Pioneer "Project" speakers

US-made... from the "Project 80" up, they were pretty nice, actually.
The attached is from AK member Crotalus (IIRC), who has a treasure trove of this sort of literature. The server crash ate the attachments in the earlier thread(s) :-(
 

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Mark,

Thanks for the pics.

Are the woofer surrounds made of paper / foam?

How do they sound to you? What do you drive them with?

Waiting for your listening impressions.
 
Savv- I probably will not listen to them for at least a couple of days. I didn't pay attention to the surrounds- but I didn't really notice any foam. On the one pic of the stamp on the back it says 1w- so i'm thinking it might be a 1 watt speaker. If you do a search here I remember at least one member having these- try contacting them if you need an answer before I play with them-mark
 
I bought a pair of the Project 80s that were missing the tweeters. I plopped in a pair of the little Peerless polypropylene cones (a vastly underappreciated tweeter, with a essentially flat impedence curve, so it acted just as crossover theory thought it should), and gave to a friend. They were startlingly good on jazz. Don't know how the original sound, but they were a popular speaker at the time.
 
I've got a set of Realistic Solo-1's, GW find, 3$. Single 6 inch driver, Sound is very poor. People on the net say they are 40 Watt. I bought for the simple fact that they have a phono plug on the back.
 
I own both Solo 1's and Solo 103's. They each sound pretty good for what they are, but are different from each other. The Solo 1 is listed in my 1967 RS catalog as well as my 1974 catalog so it had at least seven years on the market. The claimed freqency response is 50 to 14000 Hz. It has the strengths common to decently constructed single driver speakers and the weakness of limited frequency response. To my ears it has a pleasantly mellow sound when driven (not too hard!) with a decent amp or receiver.
 
I have a pair of the Project 60's used with a Yamaha CR-620 in workshop. The boxes are stout, the grills remove after releasing the 4 nuts from inside the cabinet. They are only rated 20 watts, but those are 70's watts! 8" woofer and die cast horn polycarbonate tweeter. I had to replace the original cloth rolled woofers previously, (the magnets fell apart) with new poly cones from parts express, replacing the tweeters later with goldwood GT-302/S 1/2" polycarbonates, hot gluing them to the original cast horns. The caps I found recently were dry and off, so I replaced the original 2mf with 4mf for a 5K crossover, keeping the original inductors, they are now bright and alive with decent tight bass.
 
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Celt said:
OH! Plug those damn RCA jacks up! They create an air leak which causes the cabinet to unload (the bass response suffers). (Use unterminated RCA plugs.)
Click to expand...
Many of the later Nova and Optimus speakers had RCA jacks that were sealed. The crossovers I've pulled from them and pitture of the crossovers from others have sealed jacks. The solos are earlier and probably not sealed though. But I see posts from time to time suggesting plugging the jacks in the Novas and Oprimus speakers. Its just not needed. The Solo speakers I've heard sound pretty good for full rangers in a sealed box.
 
I have a pair of solo 1’s that I cleaned up, sanded the outside the applied Odies Oil to bring out the grain, very nice. They have very simple wiring, and love the gold tone speaker fabric.
 
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