I always wonder what it would be like to rebuild from scratch an old, vintage speaker that already sounded very good (like the Bose 601series III) but use all new modern drivers & extremely thick, non-resonating MDF particle board... like 1" or even thicker?! Like one of the guy's here (Sridah or ?) said he wants to do with Infinity Emit tweeters/soft domes/hard domes, etc... . Maybe use Morel woofers? Or even old school woofers from another set of speakers which have cabinets that are toast? Like some Infinity RS6000's that I just parted out. I removed/kept EVERYTHING from the cabs & trashed the cabs due to their extreme water damage/absorption. Now I have four 10" woofers, two Polydome midranges, & two EMIT tweeters to play around with. I have other Infinity speakers (like the 2000A's, CS3006 & the RS4b, a single Kappa 6) which have similar driver set-ups, but have way better cabinetry quality. What I always think about it doing is a DIY with driver's like these but in the design of another speaker, like the 601 Series III. A thick, heavy-duty cabinet without any resonances (maybe with B&W Prism speaker technology inside which eliminates standing waves? Pyramids on the interior walls) with the design of the dual chambered woofers ported into another chamber then slot ported out the bottom rear. Using EMIT tweeters & Polydome midranges (facing the same angles as the Bose) but using four EMIT tweeters & four Polydome midranges for EACH speaker cabinet, instead of only 4 "twiddlers" per speaker cabinet. This way, mids & highs are taken care of by their specific drivers instead of only one "full-range" paper, "twiddler". The EMIT tweeters also play to 45khz!! Way beyond human hearing but it helps in 2nd, 3rd, 4th order harmonics, etc... . Many people complain that Bose uses "cheap", paper drivers but charges an exorbitant amount of money for their speakers, which to them is not justifiable. Well, I'd like to see/hear more expensive, higher-quality drivers perform in their place... just to experiment & see if there is a huge difference in sound quality or not. Infinity used rear facing EMIT tweeters on their Kappa 9's & they sounded phenominal! They also used bipolar ribbons on their 2000A's (which I actually have, thank God!) & they are some of the best speakers I've ever heard. These are not exactly the same angle of reflection that the Bose does, but they are reflecting none the less... more dipole I guess. So Bose's so-called "direct-reflecting technology" has been used (to a degree) by many other companies (including EPI) & with great success, so why can't someone use thicker cabinetry & different drivers to accomplish the same or hopefully better results? Some believe to leave a great speaker alone & I agree, but if you can make a speaker out of old, spare parts & some thicker MDF sound just as good or possibly better than the original... and you are having a blast doing so... then go for it. You will learn things along the journey which you didn't know before & may even be able to share your project with other loved ones who might want to join/help you work on it. (A father/son project... a father/daughter project... a husband/wife project... a grandfather/grandkid project... a neighbor/neighbor project... a friend/friend project... whatever?)
I wish Bose would come out with upgraded direct replacement drivers for these older speakers... like real woofers with butyl rubber surrounds, heavy-duty magnets (neodymium?), cast aluminum frames with sound deadening material applied to the back of them, with the ability to go down to 20hz (or even a little lower?) &, even better, newly upgraded 3" "twiddlers" with a KEF-like UNI-Q tweeter in its center or at least a screw-in metal bullet (like B&W has, but it's in plastic) to hit 20khz+ & maybe use kevlar or something for the midrange cone material? Use high-grade caps/coils/resistors/internal wiring & whatever other crossovers parts are necessary. Real wood veneer would be mandatory. It would look like a Bose 601 Series III, but sound much better & possibly look better, depending on which real wood veneer you used.
Has anyone else had these crazy ideas before or am I the only one?
