Carbsandcaps
Super Member
I’ve been on the lookout for cloth surround bookshelf speakers for some time now and I finally found them!
Ever since I found a set of no name house speakers from goodwill that had no right sounding as good as they did, I wanted to find out why I liked them so much. They have that low, smooth almost flubbery bass that I personally love. The CTS woofers had some surrounds that I couldn’t figure out. They were whitish yellow and sticky? Well after some research I found out they are cloth coated with butyl rubber. They sounded perfect to my ears hooked up to a tube amp.
Now fast forward a few years and I have a tube setup at work with my trusty old JBL LX-22 speakers but the tube amp doesn’t seem to be putting out enough to power the woofers so I decided to look around for something like my no name wonder speakers but in a bookshelf size I could use at work.
Looking around the local ads I found a set of Martin micromax 110 speakers with that distinctive whitish yellow woofer surround. For $30 I couldn’t message him fast enough. Picked them up today and tested them on my fisher x-202-b and there it was, that beautiful blubbery bass that I was looking for, but with very crisp highs. I do believe come from the looseness of the cloth surrounds but I could be 100% wrong too, either way I don’t care they are amazing to my ears.
I decided to crack them open and see what was inside. The woofer is more shallow than I had thought. The tweeter that I hadn’t given a second thought to is actually beefy almost a small mid range. The crossover underneath all that 1960’s itchy fiberglass is a single, lowly 6uf capacitor. I was thinking about replacing the tweeters with one of the sets of infinity emit’s I had laying around and using a more complicated crossover but I don’t think I want to take away any of the charm of these speakers. I’ll probably just replace the capacitor with a film and use them as they are.
These speakers are not going to be for everyone. If you’re used to super efficient in your face speakers with a ton of sound than these probably aren’t for you. If you’re looking to be surrounded in a blanket of warm 60’s sound, like a snuggie of sound, the Martin micromax 110’s might just be worth trying out.
Anyone wanting to add anything or tell me I’m full of it please feel free!
Ever since I found a set of no name house speakers from goodwill that had no right sounding as good as they did, I wanted to find out why I liked them so much. They have that low, smooth almost flubbery bass that I personally love. The CTS woofers had some surrounds that I couldn’t figure out. They were whitish yellow and sticky? Well after some research I found out they are cloth coated with butyl rubber. They sounded perfect to my ears hooked up to a tube amp.
Now fast forward a few years and I have a tube setup at work with my trusty old JBL LX-22 speakers but the tube amp doesn’t seem to be putting out enough to power the woofers so I decided to look around for something like my no name wonder speakers but in a bookshelf size I could use at work.
Looking around the local ads I found a set of Martin micromax 110 speakers with that distinctive whitish yellow woofer surround. For $30 I couldn’t message him fast enough. Picked them up today and tested them on my fisher x-202-b and there it was, that beautiful blubbery bass that I was looking for, but with very crisp highs. I do believe come from the looseness of the cloth surrounds but I could be 100% wrong too, either way I don’t care they are amazing to my ears.
I decided to crack them open and see what was inside. The woofer is more shallow than I had thought. The tweeter that I hadn’t given a second thought to is actually beefy almost a small mid range. The crossover underneath all that 1960’s itchy fiberglass is a single, lowly 6uf capacitor. I was thinking about replacing the tweeters with one of the sets of infinity emit’s I had laying around and using a more complicated crossover but I don’t think I want to take away any of the charm of these speakers. I’ll probably just replace the capacitor with a film and use them as they are.
These speakers are not going to be for everyone. If you’re used to super efficient in your face speakers with a ton of sound than these probably aren’t for you. If you’re looking to be surrounded in a blanket of warm 60’s sound, like a snuggie of sound, the Martin micromax 110’s might just be worth trying out.
Anyone wanting to add anything or tell me I’m full of it please feel free!
