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Did Philips do kits?

S

Shel-e-bean

Active Member
I was at a garage sale today and spotted a pair of home-built speakers. The drivers seem to be Philips, and there is a crossover/terminal on the back that said Philips and 100 watts. I couldn't really crank them up because of the situation, but they seemed fine at low volume.
Did Philips make packages/matched kits?
The seller said his buds were going "right on" when he was building them.
I may go back tomorrow and grab them if they are still around.
 
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Shel-e-bean said:
I was at a garage sale today and spotted a pair of home-built speakers. The drivers seem to be Philips, and there is a crossover/terminal on the back that said Philips and 100 watts. I couldn't really crank them up because of the situation, but they seemed fine at low volume.
Did Philips make packages/matched kits?
The seller said his buds were going "right on" when he was building them.
I may go back tomorrow and grab them if they are still around.
Click to expand...

If the price is right and you like the sound, Go for 'um! Phillips is a huge company, have made some of the best components for many, many, other manufacturer's and, some not so good ones too! The Dutch are are some of the nicest group of folks I've had the pleasure of visiting in their homeland:thmbsp: I'd move there in a heartbeat (just gotta learn how to like mayo on french fries:yuck:)

Does this help at all?
 
For as far as I know, they didn't make kits, but many if not all drivers they produced were sold separately and showed up in many DIY-designs. Or it could be that the drivers and filters were taken out of their factory-made cabinets and put in a DIY enclosure.
Sound quality of Philips divers varies. They've made some brilliant ones, including famous high-efficieny broadband speakers and a very famous woofer called the 'Bombardon' and some very nice ribbons, but they also made a load of cr*p. So try to listen and check the foam.

@ stuwee: thnx for the nice words, but Holland ain't paradise. If you move here, the mayonaise would be the least of your troubles... ;)
 
No rule without exceptions,I'm afraid!I know of at least one.Why?Simply because I have built it myself.It was the ADK 3540 which was a kit containing a AD10100 woofer,a AD5060Sq mid and a AD0160T tweeter.It had all you needed-baffle,drivers,wires and so on.If you wished you could buy a prefabricated 35 lit box in walnut.You had to glue this box together yourself.This was in 1975.
 

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Rolf Zetterberg said:
No rule without exceptions,I'm afraid!I know of at least one.Why?Simply because I have built it myself.It was the ADK 3540 which was a kit containing a AD10100 woofer,a AD5060Sq mid and a AD0160T tweeter.It had all you needed-baffle,drivers,wires and so on.If you wished you could buy a prefabricated 35 lit box in walnut.You had to glue this box together yourself.This was in 1975.
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Interesting! Is that Swedish? I never seen that thing over here, but I have to admit I didn't look over our borders. Do you still have it? How does it sound?
 
Yes,it's possible that these kits(if you read my attachment carefully-which I should have done! -you'll see that there were three more kits-10,20 and 25Watts)were made for the Swedish market only by Philips Sweden.On the other hand it very much resembles the System 20 as recommended by Dutch Philips.
How did they sound?Well,some time has passed since I heard them,but I remember that I thought they were a little weak in the low,low bass.Some of that may be due to the fact that they were new,so don't take my criticism too seriously.
 

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Hey Bean, you bag that Philips kit speaker? Some old guy delivered a home brew set here using the same kit that Rolf mentioned. Interesting woofer.
 
ARRAY said:
Hey Bean, you bag that Philips kit speaker? Some old guy delivered a home brew set here using the same kit that Rolf mentioned. Interesting woofer.
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No, I'm a little flooded with speakers right now.
I see the ad is still up-
<url removed>
It is tempting though. :scratch2:
 
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Hej Rolf,
Thank you very much for the documentation on ADK3540 from Philips. Yes, I bought them from Deltron and built them in the 70ies. It is the frequency curve from the advertisement that I recognise from my papers. It is incredible how the "System20" could have such a flat characteristic with the same crossover and the same elements in a closed cabinet ... In fact I had difficulties already in 1977 to find an annotated schematic of the crossovers, so I had to measure the coils. It is in fact a coarse compromise in that the cutoff for the bass is much lower than 500 Hz. This seems to be done because the 1st order filter is far too simple, and it needs more phase lag to fit with the phase lead of the midrange even thogh the acoustic delay from the deeper woofer also contribute. Similar drawbacks are in the mid-treble transition, nominally at 4500 Hz.
So I skipped this filter and built three power amplifiers and linear phase active filters. In this form I have enjoyed these loudspeakers daily until now! They still required some equalisation e.g. to compensate for the still low response at 1000 Hz and very low bass.
Unfortunately, now a dust cover from one of the AD10100/W4 has broken down! Do you happen to have a new one to sell? I will buy something better than these 35 year old things, but I don't yet know what, and I don't want to throw them away.
Best regards
 
I know that Philips had DIY kits available in the late 70's and early 80's here in the Netherlands, because I've seen various ads of DIY electronics and speakers in magazines from that era. Unfortunately, I can't find those magazines anymore...
 
Phillips is certainly one of my "phavorite" driver makers! I especially admire their dome and cone mid units and their tweeter units were good as well.

I often see their old drivers come up on the auction sights- and if going cheap enough I will nab them! Audax and Focal are a couple of other imports I like as well, and even the old Becker, CTS stateside stuff was not all bad.
DC
 
They used to sell them in Australia years ago as well as under there other name Magnavox.

I wanted to buy a pair of Phillips powered motional feedback speakers. At the time they even gave you a free pre-amp. So you only needed to get a turntable and you were set.

Philips were way ahead of their time with this active speaker range. Passive filter, 2 power amps per side, 40 W for the lows, 20 W for the highs. Motional Feedback electronic woofer correction. The bass and bassDRUM emanating from these small boxes has to be heard to be believed. Lots of low level detail and "listening into the recording" when hooked up to a decent preamp.

One of those special deals that you kick yourself later when you didn't take them up on it.
 
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