Help ID'ing speakers

[MOZfreek]

Driving down the road and saw these on the curb, had to stop and scoop em. No brand anywhere so I opened them up and I'm thinking they are Realistic brand, or at least that's what the tweeter in one of them says. Anyone seen these before? I Google searched and no matches

 

[elitopus]

Wow.

I would have picked them up for free too. You can reuse the cabinets for some other drivers.

 

[Dswankey]

Whatever they were they have since been frankensteined, those blue speakers look like car audio speakers.

The cabs have a late 50's early 60's vibe and I bet somewhere along the line someone got a hold of them and added in what you currently see, at least the switches look original.

 

[MOZfreek]

Whatever they were they have since been frankensteined, those blue speakers look like car audio speakers.

The cabs have a late 50's early 60's vibe and I bet somewhere along the line someone got a hold of them and added in what you currently see, at least the switches look original.

Thanks for the reply! I too thought those blue speakers were car 6x9's but upon further Google searches, I noticed they had the Dow Radio sticker, Google tells me that used to be an audio store in Pasadena. No longer in business, I can't call and get their opinion on the cabinets, but I'm guessing they serviced these little guys and replaced the drivers with some of their own brand drivers?

 

[audiotemp]

Those 6x9's are car speakers. After the tube era, Dow was an industrial, DIY, and overstock/surplus electronics parts store.

 

[Nat]

There were ellipticals that were very high quality - EMIs are the obvious example - but most, but not all, 6X9s were car speakers. That doesn't mean they are not capable speakers. I associate that blue color with Oaktron, which apparently is a Misco company. I don't think they are particularly renowned, but that doesn't mean they aren't good. Miscos are used in some quality speakers.
But I suspect that the configuration of the speakers will easily outweigh whatever quality the drivers have. Some face in, the others out, and this should have the effect of cancelling some nonlinearities, but then there are all those switched, which I assume allow changing phase or some such, and who knows what witches' brew will result. The piezo dome looks like a half hearted add on to me - whoever built these originally was going for broke. And probably got there...

 

[audiotemp]

I associate that blue color with Oaktron

There are codes visible on the speaker. Oaktron's EIA code is "918." There's also a "223" which could be a date code, week 23 of '62 or '72, although if the top line of the price tag "1/64" is the Dow stocking date it would have to be the former.

 

[NAD80]

The date codes on the switches 2 from 59, 2 from 63. So the 64 year sounds good.