Ste-Ma type 500, what a nice piece of furniture!

[Jens Sinding]

I picked up these last week for 20€, just because they looked so nice, and the cabinetry is remarkable though some design choices may prevent them from reaching their full potential.
As far as I have been able to find out these are Peerless kit 3-15 with a slightly different crossover and layout of the drivers.
The base and midrange both measure as 4 Ohms in circuit while the treble measures as 1.5 Ohms.
Now regarding those designs choices.
First the grille is made of thin veneered slats. While this looks great, it must cause a lot of diffraction. Secondly each driver is “protected” with a fabric front which probably works wonders for the treble response.
Well, I regard these more as museum pieces than anything I am likely to hook up permanently, but I will put in new capacitors, just to hear what they have to offer.
As far as I can tell Ste-Ma was a furniture maker and the attention to detail really stands out. The back plate and sides of the cabinet is double veneered in rosewood/palisander, and the corners have rosewood inserts not just veneer.

 

[Jens Sinding]

The cap values are 12 and 60 uf ?
Well, I won’t be putting in polycaps

 

[Dswankey]

Thanks for sharing, were/are these a local (Aarhus) to you manufacturer? did the market/sell outside of Denmark?

 

[Jens Sinding]

The crossover uses the same components and layout as the original 3.2 Ohms version of the 3-15 kit, which also fits my measurements, so the impedance curve for these speakers may be interesting. According to the Peerless 1967 catalog I found at Vintagehifi.dk (search Peerless katalog) the coil should be 0.15 mH.

 

[Jens Sinding]

Yes the manufacturer also marketed their speakers in the USA, but they and the drivers were produced in Denmark.

Thanks for sharing, were/are these a local (Aarhus) to you manufacturer? did the market/sell outside of Denmark?

View attachment 3062698

 

[eiraved]

They are beautiful! I can't help but think that "grill" doesn't help the sound any. Is it removeable?

 

[Jens Sinding]

I think I will put them back together for now and give them a listen. The 3.2 Ohm load is bit scary but it will be okay if I don’t drive them too hard, that is use all 15w

 

[Jens Sinding]

They are beautiful! I can't help but think that "grill" doesn't help the sound any. Is it removeable?

No, the grill is fixed and the drivers are mounted from the rear. I think they were thinking of these as furniture rather than HiFi (which they are probably not anyway)

 

[Jens Sinding]

It seems that the kit 3-15 was in the Peerless catalogue since the 1950’s and into the 60’s and maybe the early 70’s. The drivers seem to be alnico and rather well regarded, particularly the cone tweeter. As they probably have paper surrounds they should be fine.
I will see if I have time to reassemble and hook them up tomorrow.

 

[Dswankey]

 

[Jens Sinding]

Yep, that’s the one

 

[Jens Sinding]

So I put new capacitors in yesterday and I have been giving them a listen today.
Voices are good, the top is quite airy and better than expected.
In their present position about a meter from the wall the bass is just about absent.
They come with integrated eyelets for wall hanging, and this would probably help the deep range a lot.
I will need to move some stuff around to get them up against a wall, so that will have to wait a bit.
The new caps are much smaller in dimension and not nearly as pretty . One of the 12uf caps read 18uf and the other 13.5, the 60uf caps read 73 and 77 respectively. So all except one was out of the 20% spec, though I don’t know how much it matters.
I used a 56 and 4 uf cap to get the 60uf value but could probably have managed with the 56uf.

 

[Jens Sinding]

After some running in the bass is there. I suspect that the woofer suspension was a bit stiff from years of disuse.
All in all these are much better than expected, and extremely effective.
Not the ideal situation. Putting them on the wall would further help the bass (or is that a fish?)