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Renkus heinz horn drivers

elitopus

elitopus

Addicted Member
I am looking for some Altec alternative drivers for my 511b horns. I have been trying to find a pair of Emilar drivers but they are almost as expensive as the Altec's. Also diaphragms are expensive.
I have been looking at some Renkus Heinz drivers on ebay and there are some SSD-1800-16 drivers and SSD-1801-16 drivers.
Looking at the specs it seems the only difference is that the 1800 goes to 17khz and the 1801 goes to 22khz. They both go down to 500hz.
Does anyone have experience with either or both driver? I think it would be a no brainer to go for the 1801's but Im not sure what they sacrificed to get the extra 5khz.
 
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1800 will handle more power, but as noted, has the lower HF rolloff. 1801 is less robust, but extends further out. They're pretty bloody tough, though. Bowtie427ss is the R-H expert around here, I assume he'll chime in at some point.
 
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Ok thanks Sam. The power difference doesn't look like much. I'll be using a low powered tube amp so that isn't too much of a concern. Would I even notice the freq response difference if I can only hear to 13.5khz? I can get the 1800's cheaper is why I ask :)
 
I really doubt you'd hear much of a difference. I've looked at the response curves side-by-side, but it's been a while. I don't remember a huge difference.
 
I have a pair of the SSD 1800 and for me they work fine, but my hearing drops of at about 14K- 15K. The only other issue that I see with the RH drivers from that era is it seems that there is no one manufacturing replacement diaphragms, and the supply of new ones appears to have dried up. Once in a great while they come up on ebay, but for the most part, at least from my searching they are unobtainable.
 
There is an available mylar diaphragm that is in current production. Aluminum diaphragms are all NOS, unfortunately. Orange County Speaker still has the SSD1801-16 in stock, but they're eye-burningly expensive. Fortunately the stock R-H diaphragms are quite tough, and should last forever in home use.
 
I stand corrected. Orange County Speakers does have OEM aluminums. Good to know. But wow, twice what I paid for the diaphragms for my Altec 802s from Great Plains. I think you are right, it would be pretty tough to damage those diaphragms at home listing levels without some other extenuating circumstance. The good thing is working RH drivers for the most part seem to sell at a very reasonable price for the quality.
 
Its also interesting that there are alot more "blown" emilar drivers on ebay. Not that many R-H though.
 
elitopus said:
Its also interesting that there are alot more "blown" emilar drivers on ebay. Not that many R-H though.
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Coincidence. At any given time you may see the status reverse.

With Emilar 175's the Radian diaphragm for about a C note sounds real nice.

R H SSD diaphragms have always been expensive. When i used to use them for work 20+ years ago they were 155 bucks each. The flip side of that is that they are very rugged, much more so than an Altec diaphragm. Really, the only way they ever break is from serious human error, serious electrical/equipment failure, or just too many long hard hours.

For me the irony of this is that the Altec drivers that we can easily source proper replacements for, are the drivers that i baby. Occasionally, i still do sound for a couple local events, and the horns i usually bring for that are a mismatched pair of old beat up 511's with SSD-1800's on them. That pair of drivers came from one of my portable PA systems and have been in service since i bought them as new leftovers circa 1987, maybe 86. If you don't abuse them, run them too hard too low too long, they will last indefinitely.
 
I picked up two SSD1801-8s last year. One had the original 8 ohm diaphragm with good continuity, the other had a replacement 16 that did not (terminal ripped clean off).

The kapton voice coil had melted into the gap on the 8 ohm driver, to the point where safely removing it was impossible. The replacement 16 ohm driver had melted some blobs of kapton, but it was removable and repairable with a terminal from the dead 8 ohm unit Fortunately Kapton doesn't stick too well to magnetic pole pieces, and it popped off pretty easily. I had to scrape the inside of the 16 ohm VC a bit to get it smooth again, but then it worked fine. Fortunately I found a NOS 16 ohm diaphragm for a small amount of cash on eBay right when I was looking.

Long story short - those diaphragms can take a huge amount of damage and keep going. More so than anything else I've run across.
 
Note that the Radian drivers, themselves, also share much of the "DNA" of the Emilar and Renkus drivers. Radian was started by a fellow who worked closely with Jonas Renkus, and actually started with several former Emilar engineers in-house...

Regards,
Gordon.
 
And, of course, the elder Mr. Renkus (his son originally founded Renkus-Heinz before dad came on board), worked for Altec on their compression drivers for a number of years.
 
I loved my RH when I had them-they would take a real beating! Alas...I ended up with Radian 475's....but just barely!
DC
 
Radian... Thats another brand to look at. I checked out the 465's and 475's and there are some good deals but they only go down to 800hz. I want the ability to cross at 500 if I want.
Still though if I see a deal I will pick them up
 
Anyone have experience with the R-H SSD-1400? It says they have a freq range from 1khz-19khz but the test graph on the R-H brochure shows them crossed at 800hz. Im wondering if I can run these down to 800hz at low power (<15w). Or maybe even 500hz :)
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Also I am not asking a question of value but basically it would cost me over 100 dollars more for a pair of ssd-1800 versus the ssd-1400. Im just not sure its worth it
 
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