Speakers with questionable "upgrades"... post your findings here.

[leesonic]

How about a thread showing speakers with questionable "upgrades"? They can be either from eBay, Craigslist, or pictures you've taken in your travels. No links to the web sites mentioned, just save the pictures and post 'em here. Let's see if we can make a hall of shame.

Here is a pair of Mission speakers, upgraded with an additional Realistic tweeter and a JBL woofer, which itself looks like it's been upgraded with several coats of truck bed liner. Since the Realistic tweeter is now in the hole where the reflex port was, the "port" has been moved to the back, courtesy of a hole saw.





How about these pair of Advents? We all know that Advent tweeters aren't capable of reducing the full frequency range, so the owner added an additional piezo tweeter.



Gong on from the above, Technics speakers must be even less able to reproduce the high frequencies, so this pair has TWO extra piezo tweeters installed.



Lee.

 

[NAD80]

Upgrades? Super Genius at work!

 

[BillyTheKid]

I have no pics, but i did once find a pair of OLA's with the original drivers replaced with junky 12" radio shack drivers. They were so oversized that the bullnose molding had been notched on both sides to accommodate.

On the 'good' side of upgrading. I found another pair of OLA that had stickers on the drivers stating they were factory replacement drivers. The owner must have bought replacements instead of refoaming.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Recently on the What I Learned on Craigslist thread:

 

[EngineerNate]

Recently on the What I Learned on Craigslist thread:

Yeeikes.

 

[leesonic]

How do you make White Van speakers even worse? Put in some PA drivers that are WAAAAYY too big for the cabinets. This is a picture from my old cellphone, but you get the idea.

 

[Johnny_Law]

My first AR-4x that came with upgraded Realistic Super Tweeters sealed by white caulking applied with a garden hose

 

[fishondwan]

 

[dosmalo]

If Mikie likes it, it's got to be good!
Ouch!

 

[cassette]

Rare Infinities currently on CL in my area. One of these things is not like the other.

 

[Justgotohm]

How about a thread showing speakers with questionable "upgrades"? They can be either from eBay, Craigslist, or pictures you've taken in your travels. No links to the web sites mentioned, just save the pictures and post 'em here. Let's see if we can make a hall of shame.

Here is a pair of Mission speakers, upgraded with an additional Realistic tweeter and a JBL woofer, which itself looks like it's been upgraded with several coats of truck bed liner. Since the Realistic tweeter is now in the hole where the reflex port was, the "port" has been moved to the back, courtesy of a hole saw.

View attachment 1266681

View attachment 1266682

How about these pair of Advents? We all know that Advent tweeters aren't capable of reducing the full frequency range, so the owner added an additional piezo tweeter.

View attachment 1266683

Gong on from the above, Technics speakers must be even less able to reproduce the high frequencies, so this pair has TWO extra piezo tweeters installed.

View attachment 1266685

Lee.

Haha, yes the Missions are pretty mucked up. They have JBL M209-8a woofers (mids), Realistic 40-1310 super tweeters. I know this because I bought them for the sum of there parts, cheap. Assuming all the drivers work I can recone the pair of 8’s for $70, the tweeters are early Japanese all metal and have value, I have no intention of even hooking them up. So funny this tragic excuse for an upgrade caught someone else’s attention. Plus I really needed a 7th pair of Realistic supers, haha.
The pic below was sent to me by a friend while we were discussing this post.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Wait, is there a second woofer on the back in an isobaric arrangement? Please tell me there is...

 

[Zonker92]

This JBL L212 "improvement" (long since broken down and sold off) always left me scratching my head:

 

[RS Steve]

It's all about the bass! How about some car subs and throw away the original woofers.

 

[Silentnet]

20+ years ago when the foam rotted on my dad's Cizek Model Twos we replaced the original woofer with $12 car subs with purple surrounds and "Thump!" written across the dustcaps.

Don't have pictures, only my shame.

Edit: something like this ****-show:

In these:

It's all about the bass! How about some car subs and throw away the original woofers.


View attachment 1269254

Been there, done that -- see above.

(I was ~11 at the time. My dad has no such excuse.)

 

[Harvestor]

My first AR-4x that came with upgraded Realistic Super Tweeters sealed by white caulking applied with a garden hose

I thought those Realistic Tweeters we're some of the good ones that they had made for them ?

 

[Johnny_Law]

I thought those Realistic Tweeters we're some of the good ones that they had made for them ?

They sounded much better when I put phenolics in them. I could have adjusted my crossover - there was some discussion at the time. http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/ar-4x-resto-mod-with-a-west-coast-twist.681567/

 

[leesonic]

Infinity speakers seem to be popular to be "upgraded"...

 

[StimpyWan]

Maybe these???

 

[Chris Brown]

A Pair of L36 I once found. Had to track down a pair of 125a drivers on eBay to fix the "upgrade".

As a bonus, one of the port tubes was obviously not stock. Not sure why it was modified by the previous owner.