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BIC Model 66

I recently picked up a pair of these and they need surrounds - seems like an odd size, like the foam needs to be a ~9" ID and ~11 5/8" OD. Would love to know what foam anyone used before. Cheers.

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Funny, I just posted mentioned these bases in another post. Here is the sell sheet for a base designed for BIC speakers from '77. I built these from this ad back then and I'm still using them for my Fisher XP-7b speakers. Nice work!

Rich
 

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too bad BIC's initial offerings in 1971 weren't like these. i might have liked them enough to get them, but when i heard the originals (formula 6?) they were boom boom boom.

mids were strident and the highs were not bad but unfocused.

i had been hearing the AR sound at that time and then the ESS early speakers blew me away.

these would have competed well with the OL Advent at that time.

nice speakers you have!
 
I'm looking forward to hearing mine. Looks like only 2 caps - a 2uF cap for the tweeters and another cap before the pot, parallel to the inductor, for the mid. One thing I'm a little surprised at is that there are no crossover components in the woofer circuit ... seems to get the full input signal, other than the fuse (red and black disappearing to the right are to the woofer).

IMG_20150906_174009195_HDR.jpg
 
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Yes I consulted with Rick Cobb and he came up with a replacement pair of surrounds that worked very well. The speakers are in storage now but I might be able to come up with the paperwork for the surrounds I ordered if interested.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Finished up my re-capped, re-foam, and re-finish, thank you for the help!

For mid-pot caps, I used PE 8.0uF 100V caps, and for the tweeter caps I used Dayton 2.0uF polys with .01uF by-pass caps in parallel.

For surrounds, I used JL Audio 12W3 replacement surrounds from eBay (seller "ultra_audio_1") which are just about a perfect fit.

For the cab re-finish, I used Howards Rest-O-Finish in Walnut with 0000 steel wool followed by Howard's Feed-N-Wax left overnight.

I also removed and cleaned both mid-pots, one of which was in poor shape but sits, like the other, at a solid 0.2-0.3ohms at full max.

I got lucky because the cabs are near mint. One of the BIC logos still has the protective plastic on it!

IMG_20151004_103224973.jpg

IMG_20151004_103333071.jpg

IMG_20151004_102911413.jpg

And enjoying the maiden voyage on my test rig (hooked up to a Sherwood S-7650-CP hiding behind the Kinima CC, only the BICs connected).

IMG_20151004_103251406.jpg
 
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Johnny_Law said:
Finished up my re-capped, re-foam, and re-finish, thank you for the help!

For mid-pot caps, I used PE 8.0uF 100V caps, and for the tweeter caps I used Dayton 2.0uF polys with .01uF by-pass caps in parallel.

For surrounds, I used JL Audio 12W3 replacement surrounds from eBay (seller "ultra_audio_1") which are just about a perfect fit.

For the cab re-finish, I used Howards Rest-O-Finish in Walnut with 0000 steel wool followed by Howard's Feed-N-Wax left overnight.

I also removed and cleaned both mid-pots, one of which was in poor shape but sits, like the other, at a solid 0.2-0.3ohms at full max.

I got lucky because the cabs are near mint. One of the BIC logos still has the protective plastic on it!

IMG_20151004_103224973.jpg


IMG_20151004_103333071.jpg


IMG_20151004_104358599.jpg


And enjoying the maiden voyage on my test rig (hooked up to a Sherwood S-7650-CP hiding behind the Kinima CC, only the BICs connected).

IMG_20151004_103251406.jpg
Click to expand...
Johnny_Law said:
Finished up my re-capped, re-foam, and re-finish, thank you for the help!

For mid-pot caps, I used PE 8.0uF 100V caps, and for the tweeter caps I used Dayton 2.0uF polys with .01uF by-pass caps in parallel.

For surrounds, I used JL Audio 12W3 replacement surrounds from eBay (seller "ultra_audio_1") which are just about a perfect fit.

For the cab re-finish, I used Howards Rest-O-Finish in Walnut with 0000 steel wool followed by Howard's Feed-N-Wax left overnight.

I also removed and cleaned both mid-pots, one of which was in poor shape but sits, like the other, at a solid 0.2-0.3ohms at full max.

I got lucky because the cabs are near mint. One of the BIC logos still has the protective plastic on it!

IMG_20151004_103224973.jpg


IMG_20151004_103333071.jpg


IMG_20151004_104358599.jpg


And enjoying the maiden voyage on my test rig (hooked up to a Sherwood S-7650-CP hiding behind the Kinima CC, only the BICs connected).

IMG_20151004_103251406.jpg
Click to expand...
 
loudnclr said:
You did a nice job on those, are those the ones you bought off me in Novato
Click to expand...

Thanks, yep these are them. Took me a little while to find the right size surround to use, and I ended up using a 30Hz test tone to center the voice coil instead of using shims. If you ever need any help doing any re-foaming or re-capping or whatever, let me know.

faber12 said:
Looks great, how do they sound?
Click to expand...

They sound good - in my music room now - they like rock, and they actually like jazz too. I'm listening to Daft Punk - Random Access Memories right now and they sound fantastic. Was listening to Charlie Parker earlier and they sounded great too. I am a sucker for 3-way speakers with 12" woofers. These are great, my old Fisher ST-440s were great, and my AR-3as are great too.

IMG_20151005_202104923.jpg
 
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Nice job! They look practically new.

I've had several pairs of speakers come and go but I still have my 66's.
 
Nice to see some BIC's sitting center-stage in front of a pair of AR3a's... BIC and the Carduner brothers (Leonard and I forget the other one) had a long history in the hi-fi business. They were the US distributor for Garrard, Wharfedale, and MANY others, plus they would also imported quality drivers and put them in locally-built/locally-sourced cabinets, so to see an actual line of non-rebranded BIC models was inevitable.

So, these late '70's models are the better ones, not the early '70's models?
 
Thanks for the history - very cool. So maybe these have a British flair to them!

I was trying to figure out the crossover to build a diagram. This is how everything appears to be configured (I did not draw the fuses). Does this look correct? The mid located between caps looked a little strange to me, so I want to make sure I didn't goof when putting it back together.

Forgive my horrible drawing skills. The jagged line with a line through it is supposed to be the potentiometer which I measured having is 0.2 - ~12 ohm range.

Slide1.JPG

And I also wanted to show off the finish on these, it's hard to capture how nice it is, but this comes close:

IMG_20151008_183929086_HDR.jpg
 
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