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Pioneer DSS-9 speaker replacement

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I think that would take a lot of work to get things working properly. You would have to measure the cabinet and see what woofer would work (something I don't know enough about), also measuring the openings and finding drivers that will fit. If that all worked out, then looking at the specs and building a custom crossover would be the next step. If you just want to get them going you could buy a crossover from parts express and buy whatever drivers fit, but who knows what the outcome would be.

Maybe look at ebay and try to find original drivers? They are good speakers, is the crossover still there?
 
Already have woofer sizes from the current owner and they still have the original crossovers inside them. I’ll have to look into buying the original speakers. Not sure why I didn’t think of that first haha. Guess I wanted a modern speaker alternative to put in them.
 
While not cheap, you can find original DSS-9 drivers on eBay. The tweeters and mods will be the easiest to get.

The DSS-9’s are terrific speakers and the cabinets you got look like they are in good shape. I hope you find drivers for them and get them playing music!
 
Nothing has turned up when looking for just the woofers to match these cabinets. How expensive might it be to find some alternatives? I’ve got two Kenwood 3 way towers laying around that might fit the dimensions...how much do I need to worry about comparability with the pioneers crossovers? Thanks again for the quality responses guys!
 
For anything close to optimal performance you need to have as close a match to the original woofer as possible. In addition to the usual considerations of a given woofer’s performance in a given size cabinet (Thiele-Small), the DSS-9’s woofer is dual voice coil, and the crossover has two connections to the woofer, one for the full bass octaves and one just for the low bass. So at the very minimum a dual voice coil woofer would really be desired.

If you call Parts Express, I bet they can help you with a replacement woofer. Those guys are really good at that kind of thing - they do tons and tons of it.

Right now I only saw one of the mids on eBay, but the mids and tweets do come up with some regularity.
 
It might take some time to get the original drivers but it's worth waiting so you get the correct sound as originally designed. Note if you join AK as a subscriber you'll have access to Barter Town where many parts change hands for good prices. Not guaranteeing you'll find them there. Are you searching using the DSS-9 model? Because if the same drivers were used in other speakers, you might be missing them. Try to get the numbers off the backs of correct drivers and search that way too.

You could stick other drivers in there but as has been said already, it's a crap shoot. As for the ones you have sitting around, if the cabinets are both sealed or both ported, and of similar size, woofers are more likely to at least work OK if transferred. At least as a temporary measure. Make sure both speakers have the same overall impedance rating (4 or 8 ohms on the back of the cabinet). Otherwise the crossover will be even farther from 'right'. Expect sound but not a miracle. Woofers interact with the cabinet and there are woofers for ported and woofers for sealed cabinets, and the two rarely intersect. Putting a woofer in the wrong type of cabinet can cause problems far worse than bad sound.
 
I had a pair of DSS 5 years ago, and the original owner had replaced the woofers with some other brand of dual voice-coil woofers. They totally rocked, even with the replacement woofers. If you can find some decent dual voicecoil 12 Inch woofers that have specs for that size box, you might be able to get away with something sounding reasonably good. That is, if you find the rest of the parts.
 
Good speakers, not too special though..They look nice and have been restored, could be a nice find depending on what your looking for.
 
alusteg said:
Seems like I’m in a little over my head trying to piece together the DSS-9s.

Any opinions on Dynaco A-25s? Another craigslist find that might suite my needs for a decent sounding speaker and my wifes requirement to match the house haha.
https://sandiego.craigslist.org/nsd/ele/6407724563.html
Click to expand...

That driver says it will do equally well in ported or sealed enclosures, which is good since we don't actually know what the OP has. But it's a sub - resonant frequency 24 Hz. I kinda think it might not work so good. For one thing it will roll off too soon depending on where the crossover point is. We don't know any of the other params on the original woofer so there isn't much else to compare.
 
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