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JPW surprise, matching sub question

rlisin

rlisin

Quad 4 life
Some two years ago I had a pair of JPW Minims (also known as JPW Mini Monitors). Fun little speakers, very detailed and amazing value for money, they usually go for $10-50, depending of the country. In these parts it's more like $50, but I got mine for free as part of another purchase. They look like this:

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Mini Monitors were best buy in their day, and JPW sold tons of them. They use Peerless woofer and Audax plastic cone tweeter, and enclosures were reportedly made by prisoners, getting the production costs even lower. JPW also made these for Denon, they were sold as Denon SC-M2.

I liked them, but I liked Missions 760i more, so I flipped them.

Last week I spotted a pair on local auction site for $30. Bad pics, with grills on, so there were no bidders. So I figured, why not play with these again. I grabbed them and they came in yesterday.

To my surprise, they turned out to be not Mini Monitors, but Gold Monitors! Way cool, because the difference is a nice Peerless soft dome tweeter. Otherwise the speakers are the same. One of the domes was pushed in, but 2 minutes with a screwdriver took care of that.

Here's what Golds look like:

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They sound as fun, but more pleasant than Mini Monitors, soft dome tweeter is a real improvement. So that was an nice surprise April Fool's scroe!
I was planning to play with them for a few days and flip them, but now I'm thinking to keep them.

As you can see in the ad above, there was a passive sub that went with those. These little speakers would definitely benefit from more low bass (hardly a surprise, closed speaker with 5.3'' woofer). Has anyone used this set? I can get the matching JPW sub, worth a shot?
 
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Given the choice I'd go with a powered sub instead of passive, but if the price is right, why not?
 
If you can get the matching sub that goes with those Golds, I would jump on it.

How often do you come across a matched sub/sat set that sounds real good. I'd go for it. Sounds like a perfect bedroom or computer setup.

The only thing you'll need is some beefy amp. Non-powered subs eat up wattage. Other than that, I wouldn't think twice if the price is right.

Have Fun. What it's all about.
 
That's the thing, I don't know if the matching sub is any good. While there are many reviews and praises of JPW Mini and Golds on the net, few people even mention the sub, and those who do only say there was one.

Also, I can't find info on the woofer in this sub, specifically if it uses foam or rubber surround. If it's a foam surround, refoaming probably wouldn't be worth the effort.

The price is below $50, way more than what it would cost in the UK, but OK for Poland, a bit more than what you'd pay for a crappy passive sub.
The sub is not in a pretty shape, works fine though, at least according to the seller.

Amp is not an issue, I'm a gear collector, so I have a number of amps to choose from. And the sub is rated 8 ohms, which is good.
 
OK, so I can guess an answer to the surround question: Vifa M21WG-09-08 is reported as used in JPW speakers at some point, and it is an 80W 8 ohm woofer, so that's what probably in that sub. That would be a rubber surround then. The Vifa has 90dB sensitivity, the sub is rated 95dB, guess the port could add the extra 5?

And now I'm more tempted to buy it and see how good my deductive skills are.

Edit: or it could be a Peerless 831739 driver, which was used in at least one JPW passive sub model. No clue as to the surround ring on this one.
 
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I see this is an old thread, but I had a pair of mini monitors with the matching sub. The sub added very good punch to the monitors. It is a bit more than double size of the monitors. It has no forward facing woofer, only one went port on the back. I've never looked in the inside (probably should have). The specs can be seen on the attached flyer. I am sorry that I've let them go.
 

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I ended up not buying that sub, and the Monitors ultimately ended up in my friend's system. He's quite happy with them. I'll let him know that the matching sub is worth getting if the price is not too high. Thanks for the info, geolang!
 
Hopefully should have the JPW passive subwoofer soon.
Been looking out for one for ages; they have either been collection only and too far away to be economic to collect or going for silly prices with delivery.
Getting a matching pair of gold monitors will be much easier as seems to be a constant supply on Ebay.

Read many a good thing about how musically good the sub is and how well matches the mini monitors/gold monitors. I would give them a try see if they have a coherence that I don't have with my current sub + bookshelf setup; something I miss from my Dovedale 3s.

I am a fan of the cheap British bookshelf speakers. My brother has the original Gale Gold monitors from the late 90s with excellent transients and these use the same drivers as the Mini Monitors but in a ported enclosure. I currently have the Gale G20s which use the same shape cabinets but with a newer woofer and soft dome tweeter.
 
So the Golds have arrived before the sub.
Initial impressions are they are bright at top end and don't go as low as my G20s (but they are a smaller and not ported, so not a surprise), not an issue as I run a sub.
Some leakage of upper bass/lower mids from cabinets (G20s cabs do not resonate at all) when hitting 75-80DB at listening position - can't tell if any noticeable effect to sound quality or not.
Happy with them :)
 
I have finally got the sub.
Its a great punchy tight little thing, integrates with the Gold monitors well, adds well timed weight to bass drums. Yet to try out its LFE abilities apart from quick low volume listen
Very placement sensitive, easy to mess the bass up, port is rear firing and does not like being too close to a wall, easy to get boom from its upper range. I need to experiment with position further.

The twin 8in drivers run isobaric, simple pair of coils for the low pass filter, the speaker connections are plain pass through, no high pass filtering.
The box dimensions suggest an F3 of 30hz when modelling the drivers (Peerless India SK 204) in a 4th order bandpass, 0.5 ripple and a bit of gain reduction, which is good for the driver size IMHO.
 
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Thanks to this thread I have one of these JPW subs on the way to match a pair of JPW Minims, which as I understand it, are supposed to be better than the Mini Monitors while looking identical and having the same specs. Foolishly I previously sold a pair of Mini Monitors that had the tweeters upgraded to silk dome by a local hifi nut. They had no bass, so I listened for a couple of hours then put them on ebay, ignorant of the possibility of obtaining this sub.

Already the Minims are an improvement on the modern Wharfedale Diamond 220s I've had for the last year, apart from two things. I have to run them with the Wharfedales to get a more rounded (bassier) sound, which now overall is unbalanced; and then at the top end they are a little screechy, a bit too crisp (with a rotel RA-02 amp anyway). This second problem is unlikely to go away with the sub I think.

Maybe they will improve with time (about 10-15 hours listening so far)? Or maybe a tweeter upgrade is in order? No idea how difficult this is but I could find a suitable tweeter (any ideas?) and get someone else to do it. Selling the cursed Wharfedales would easily pay for that.

It's funny that after more than a year of tweaking my system, and encountering much frustration, I'm finally realising that speaker choice is so, so important. Who would have known that you can't just buy blind based on Richer Sounds reviews? Doh.
 
Further to this, I've got my hands on the subwoofer as pictured above. It adds a good deal of welly to the Minims. But I don't understand how it works. With the Minims unplugged it does not make much noise, but seems to make the speakers themselves more beefy in combination?

Anyway happy with it. Now have some Gold Monitors on the way as the tweeters on the Minims look identical to those on the Mini Monitors and there is some harshness to the top end. Maybe a further improvement would be to stick the Gold tweeters into the Minims? I have no idea but it seems easy enough.

Can see myself saying goodbye to the comparatively useless modern Wharfedales.
 
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