Panasonic Thrusters: How bad are they? Let's find out!

[bowtie427ss]

Monkey Wards sold thousands of these:

The worst Thrusters are still on a level fully above the Monkey Ward Airline speakers and thousands of similar pairs pumped out under names like Yorx, Soundesign, Emerson etc..

We could debate which speakers produce the most realistic "ka chunk" when the deck changes tracks.

 

[swechsler]

Why text captions instead of a voiceover? This is a pet peeve of mine.

 

[62caddy]

Interesting video however I would have preferred acoustic rather than electronic music for making comparisons between speakers.

 

[MRX37]

Interesting video however I would have preferred acoustic rather than electronic music for making comparisons between speakers.

Well I am partly limited by this nation's insane copyright laws. So much so that just playing one note of a copyrighted tune could be enough to have my home swarmed by jack booted storm troopers, who will drag me off to Guantanamo Bay, or some un named location, where I will never be heard from again.

And partly, well it's a song I happened to like at the moment, so I rolled with it.

But, tell ya what. If I find a pair of, like actually good speakers. actually high end speakers, I would be willing to test multiple songs including an acoustic track.

Monkey Wards sold thousands of these:

The worst Thrusters are still on a level fully above the Monkey Ward Airline speakers and thousands of similar pairs pumped out under names like Yorx, Soundesign, Emerson etc..
.

YES. THESE.

When I referred to the EVS 16b's as "high end" speakers, I was specifically thinking of THESE for comparison! I've owned pairs of these! Even as a kid I knew they sucked! There was some utter, utter crap made in the 70's and 80's and it often had one of these brand names on it!

 

[Bill S]

Thanks for testing. Too bad you didn't have some Bose magic cubes to run them against though. I'd been wondering......

 

[MRX37]

Thanks for testing. Too bad you didn't have some Bose magic cubes to run them against though. I'd been wondering......

Well I did have a Bose Wave radio. That's probably close enough sound wise.

What I would love to do is have these Thrusters go head to head with some good Cerwin Vega's, or maybe Peavey's, or some high end JBL's.

 

[Doug G.]

They are what are termed "garden variety".

Doug

 

[MRX37]

I have something else I want to bring up. When I found these Thrusters, the cabinets were starting to come apart. They weren't totally falling apart, but rattles had developed in places where the glue had separated.

However I was able to re glue these cabinets... using their own glue.

As I was removing the old glue I got curious and ran a cigarette lighter under a piece of it, and realized it was a type of hot melt glue. So, mainly to save time I used a heat gun to re melt and re flow the glue, and it worked great!

So my question is what kind of glue did these speakers use? Some kind of hot melt wood glue? I kinda want to get some seeing as it sets up in minutes as opposed to hours for wood glue.

 

[Lavane]

There are many reasons these sound marginal. But missing a midrange driver doesn't equal bad midrange. Many of my favorite speakers are 2way.
As for the passive radiator, its job is pretty much the same as a port. Both the port and passive radiator have there pros and cons. I have speakers with ports, and others with a passive. Both sound very good. One thing I noticed with the thrusters is the passive radiator isn't weighted at all. No tuning done to it at all. Not a good thing. Running the woofer full range and having just a cap for the tweeter can cause both the tweeter and the woofer to produce some of the same frequencies and that can cause all sorts of problems. Its probably why you think the midrange is lacking.
There is most likely some canceling out of a portion of the midrange.
Minimal dampening material doesn't help much either. Those might, just might sound better with a proper crossover, some dampening and playing with adding some weight to the drone cone. But I dought it would be worth the effort or money. I tried a few years back to make a well built market driven speaker to sound better, but in the end I wound up with minimal results. Even with decent drivers and a well made cabinet not much could be done to fix a poor design.

 

[sKiZo]

Well I am partly limited by this nation's insane copyright laws. So much so that just playing one note of a copyrighted tune could be enough to have my home swarmed by jack booted storm troopers, who will drag me off to Guantanamo Bay, or some un named location, where I will never be heard from again.

I feel yer pain. Some time back I tried posting up a demo movie to YouTube and got tossed by the copyright police. Tried fudging the audio with a bunch of different effects - no joy here in mudville. I decided I wasn't going to let it beat me (the screen content was what was important, not the audio anyway) ... and ended up with this. You can still sorta hear the original audio, at least enough to synch it with the video.

 

[wu6fiend]

My first stereo included a pair of Thrusters (it was one of those Panasonic 3-in-1 packages, with the turntable built into to the top of the receiver, with a cassette deck), and served me well through grade 12. It was a Christmas gift from my parents, and (I still think) quite a nice gift at that. I can't recall ever thinking the Thrusters sounded particularly bad, but my options for comparison were pretty limited.

I think a lot of this "Thrusters are the worst" stuff is a lot of bandwagon jumping by posters who have likely never seen a pair of Thrusters, let alone heard them. Similar to the crowd that loves to bash Bose 901s, just because they perceive that to be the cool thing to do. Thrusters IMO are no better (and no worse) than a lot of bottom grade department store audio stuff, built to a strict price point, but still offering value to those that could/would not afford better.

 

[swechsler]

Obviously Thrusters aren't the worst. However, it might be safe to say that Thrusters are the worst speakers that have established a name for themselves. Sure, there were worse speakers you could buy, but did they have a famous name associated with them? I'm not talking about the brand name, but the name of the product line. So the Sharp speakers in the video don't count.

 

[peterp1]

The Thrusters were not good, but the Parasonic stereos they came packaged with were pretty damn sexy ...

I had a "thing" for them back in the day -- couldn't walk past one in a store without spinning the volume and tone controls to feel the detents. Even as a grade-schooler I knew they didn't sound the best, but I loved the way they looked.

 

[NH-MAN]

I swear I read an article once talking about how Thrusters were "sort of" innovative and helped bring passive radiators into mainstream or something along those lines.

 

[David_NC]

I really liked Thrusters back in the day. Of course, being 12-13, I'm not sure I was an experienced listener! I think I associated them with the family friend that I really like, and I'm sure that influenced my opinion. Still, they probably did sound better than the speakers that came with my Juliette 8-track player! It'd have been interesting to have a pair of cheap but good speakers in the mix, something fairly common but from the era of those Thrusters.

 

[David_NC]

The Thrusters were not good, but the Parasonic stereos they came packaged with were pretty damn sexy ...

I had a "thing" for them back in the day -- couldn't walk past one in a store without spinning the volume and tone controls to feel the detents. Even as a grade-schooler I knew they didn't sound the best, but I loved the way they looked.

I remember an identical unit powering the Thrusters I heard. I think they later had one with a cassette deck, but it may not have even been a Panasonic.

 

[kevintomb]

I have, I think heard every thruster speaker over the years, and not that long ago heard a few of the biggest models.

My review of them, for what they cost, they sounded okay. They are not horrible at all compared to the mid to low level department store stuff they competed with.
Nor were they great sounding. They were simply okay-semi good in some regards, but compared to Yorx, Sound Design and a dozen other forgotten names, they are for sure better.'

The SB1800 could put out some bass and play fairly loud. For sure not a junk speaker, but neither audiophile obviously.

The only stuff that was maybe equal were some of the mid priced radio shack stuff and possibly some zenith stuff, although the bigger zenith ones were somewhat better for sure.

 

[Bob in WI]

If you have two pairs stack them.

2 pair?

bonfire
put planks across them and make mini shelves
drill holes in the backs & connect them w pvc tubes & make a hamster habitat
many opportunities here.

Thanks for doing the ultimate speaker comparo - you cracked me up.
Choice of music was inspired.

 

[Bob in WI]

The Thrusters were not good, but the Parasonic stereos they came packaged with were pretty damn sexy ...

I had a "thing" for them back in the day -- couldn't walk past one in a store without spinning the volume and tone controls to feel the detents. Even as a grade-schooler I knew they didn't sound the best, but I loved the way they looked.

Wow - mine wasn't near that cool looking. It had a round green tuning dial if I remember correctly.
I took it to college. No one ever tried to steal it so it was perfect for the time.

 

[Bill S]

Wow - mine wasn't near that cool looking. It had a round green tuning dial if I remember correctly.
I took it to college. No one ever tried to steal it so it was perfect for the time.

Yea, that is a hot looking Panasonic system. My sister had a lower model with an 8 track, tuner, phono and those lovely Thrusters. It didn't sound bad compared to the competition at that low price point. I can still recall some ackward track changes on tapes like Kansas Leftoverture.