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Substitute for Speakerlab S3 Midrange Driver

Ok, I did a good listen.
I turned down the tweeter pot on my right speaker (the bright sounding one) and that calmed it down a lot making it more in line with the original left speaker.
But the right speaker seems a little clearer compared to the left which sounds ever so slightly muddled by comparison.
Could that be because of the fresh caps?
Anyway, I'll tear into the left speaker tomorrow since I'll be recapping them.
 
Just a small update. (The motorcycle project is on hold awaiting parts).
I pulled the woofer on the left speaker to have a look at the crossover. All the solder joints are still shiny looking but when the time comes I'll go over them.
The 4uf cap (that had blown on the right speaker) looks to be ever so slightly bulging on one end but I can't tell if it's up to snuff.
No matter tho, it's going to get replaced.
Before I order online I'm going to see if my nearest electronic store can order me the parts I need. There are few remaining electronics suppliers remaining in my area and I'd like to do my part in keeping them afloat.

The Parasound power amp is settling in nicely and I've never heard the S3's sound so nice.
 
I want to give thanks to all of you for helping me and giving me some of your knowledge.

I went to my most local electronics place today (Youdoit Electronics). They could not order me the Jantzen capacitors. The company who supplies their capacitors is called NTE out of New Jersey.

So what I did was buy two of the same 2.2uf capacitors that I had installed in my other speaker. And the results were the same... now I have two speakers that sound exactly alike. This is not a bad thing because I have always had both gain controls, midrange and tweeter, turned to maximum, which was my settings that I used for years. They gave the S3's the best balance to my ears.
Now, to take away the newfound brightness of the speakers all I have to do now is to turn down the rheostats to match the room acoustics, something I couldn't do before without losing the high end.
I am more than pleased with their sound now.

A good thing came out of this as well.. I found that my front speaker panel (left speaker) had come loose after nearly forty years, letting air out of my sealed enclosure. Gorilla Glue and clamps are next on order.
Another thing became apparent.. the Speakerlab S3 are incredible loudspeakers that punch well above their low cost. If you can ever get a hold of a pair I'm sure you'd agree. I'd stack them up against anything.

Thanks again to all.
 
I've enjoyed reading your journey. Never give up on a pair of Speakerlabs!

When you have them open next time would you take a few photos of the internal bracing? When I retire in a couple of years and have more time I'm thinking about making some S3 clones and all info that I an collect before then will help.

Cheers,
James
 
Good stuff guys!
The NTE thing at your local electronics store isn't surprising. Those places don't go into boutique cap varieties much unfortunately. Too much inventory if they did. I'm pretty much down to buying resistors from those places and maybe deoxit etc. you might have better luck getting our audio grade aps at a car audio shop in a pinch, but doubtful they'd have the value you need.

Replace all those caps and with Bratwurst looking over your shoulder and lending a helping mind you should be golden!

A pair of 7wa I'm restoring here go into the spray booth hopefully today if I can get my act together.
 
IMG_1242.JPG You're welcome guys.
Drugolf, you are absolutely right about the electronic supply store in my area. In fact, they are the only one who carries the big can of Deoxit. I will check car audio stores for the high end capacitors. If they can't help I'll order them and have them on hand for installation.

Bratwurst, yes, I feel guilty about not taking your full advice and buying the Jantzen caps and replacing all at once but I now have the knowledge, thanks to you, and may sometime in the future need to.

As to the S3 construction, I built then to Speakerlab specs and I will take a pic of the inside.
I couldn't find their diagram but I remember they were big on NOT using "point fasteners", meaning nails and screws.
The walnut veneer plywood cabinets were cut at 45 degree bevels and glued.
Then I lined the insides with 3/4 or 1 inch (can't remember) square pine wood. I glued, and cheated, with small wire brads. This gave me a surface to mount the front and the back particle board panels.

For now, I can send you this picture which is from a later catalog. It shows a little bit of the insides. Mine does not have the center brace and the front is different.
Notice the eighties outfits, LOL.
 
blipco, I see no reason at all that you should feel guilty about not immediately dropping everything and doing exactly what some guy on the internet said you should do. o_O

You did what a normal intelligent person should do, you listened, evaluated and validated if the information was useful for your situation, did some troubleshooting and learned something with no great cost. Now you have a plan for moving forward based on experience. I can't see where you did anything wrong. :thumbsup:

Those 2 in the advert look like Mork and Mindy. Takes me right back to the '80s.

Enjoy,
James
 
Btw blipco, I think that it is highly commendable that you are trying to support a local business as a first priority. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: Way to go!

James
 
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IMG_1269.JPG IMG_1271.JPG Here's a couple of more pics.
One is of the inside view. You can see where the front panel has separated from the inside frame. I have shoved a couple of nails to keep the space until I squirt the glue in.
The other is the clamps. The green tube you see inside is the internal enclosure for the midrange speaker.
I'm thinking of adding more sound insulation in to tighten up the bass. Not that they are boomy or hollow sounding. I just think that it may help.

When I took apart my father's Acoustic research AR2a speakers to work on them, I was astounded as to how much insulation there was. They filled up the cabinet. It was very dense with a greasy feeling. Heavy.
That's why I'm thinking of adding more to the S3's.
 
I think that working with the stuffing is worth the effort. My 7's came with enough Dacron for perhaps a 50% fill. A few years ago I removed that filling and replaced it with fiberglass batts @ about 90%. It changed the bass in a good way, more defined. I wouldn't willingly go back.

DSC03344.jpg

Cheers,
James

edit: Don't forget to think about stuffing for the mid enclosure if you haven't filled them earlier.
 
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Thanks James, that's what I need to know. My main enclosure has just a covering on the walls. My mid has some insulation but I'll add more.
Yours looks more like what I saw in the AR2a enclosures.

Cheers, Mark.
 
Get that system back as close to original as you can.

I drooled over the Speakerlab catalog back during high school days. I built a custom system with the M608R and WA4000 tweeters. Originally with dual 12" CTS woofers I later placed 12" instrument speakers for use in my first band.

Me at the drums and in front of one of the speakers, they were symetrical.

index.php
 
safebet said:
Get that system back as close to original as you can.

I drooled over the Speakerlab catalog back during high school days. I built a custom system with the M608R and WA4000 tweeters. Originally with dual 12" CTS woofers I later placed 12" instrument speakers for use in my first band.

Me at the drums and in front of one of the speakers, they were symetrical.]

Cool beans. :beerchug:
I wish I saved the actual catalog for the year I bought mine, I had my notes written in it, LOL. They had the best descriptions. This catalog was from the next year.

I'm learning patience with this project and with the motorcycle going at the same time. A little each day.
Here I have my brand new power amp and my speakers are in pieces. And to think I was almost going to replace them.
Click to expand...
 
blipco said:
Thanks James, that's what I need to know. My main enclosure has just a covering on the walls. My mid has some insulation but I'll add more.
Yours looks more like what I saw in the AR2a enclosures.

Cheers, Mark.
Click to expand...

It's worth trying and is easy to return to the was it was if you don't like the results.

My very first impression after adding the fiberglass was that there was less bass. But after a few minutes I realized that that was not really the case, instead it had become more refined and pleasant.

Since I'm throwing out ideas, the next step was to mount the speakers on spikes over and under granite. This had an even larger effect than the stuffing, and not just in the bass region but overall more defined and refined, and added to the soundstage. I didn't want to drill directly into the speaker bottom to mount the spikes so made a very simple hardwood platform for them and sat the speakers directly on that with no padding or anything between. Since your 3's are shorter it might pay to measure the tweeter height and make stands to get the tweeter at ear height, is you haven't already done that.

DSC07346.JPG DSC07348.JPG DSC07349.JPG

Cheers,
James
 
James, my speakers are standing on specialized speaker stands approximately 6 inches tall (150mm) but most of my listening is from a seated position so I'm, more or less, at the level of the tweeters. There is no problem at all with the amount of bass these woofers put out.

As to adding speaker insulation, my initial thoughts were that the insulation would physically take up room inside the enclosure, thus tightening up the bass owing to greater air compression inside the enclosure.
Now after some online research, I read that adding fill slows down the air movement creating the effect that the enclosure is now LARGER rather than smaller as common sense (at least mine) would dictate. And a larger enclosure, with less pressure can cause the cone to bottom out from undamped excursion. Is this true? (I still can't believe it).

BTW, I'm a bit envious of your S7's. They are impressive.
Cheers, Mark.
 
Afaik adding more stuffing is somewhat like having a larger cab, but there is a lot more to it than that. And realistically the amount of change from adding more stuffing is not going to be huge. Put it another way. If your cabs fronts had cracks and have been leaking air, they haven't been sealed and haven't actually been "acoustic suspension" speakers for a while now. ;) Have you been having problems with the woofers bottoming out? They would have been in much greater danger with an un-sealed cab than with the difference that more damping material in a sealed cab would make.

But regardless of that, your W1208R has a huge Xmax. The voicecoil overhang spec varies a bit from year to year but it runs from 10.1mm to 10.4mm depending on the exact year. I don't know anything about your listening habits of course, but for myself, I would need to leave the room long before I got it loud enough to worry about bottoming out the cone/coil. And the police would be here.

I really don't understand the technical effects as well I should or would like to, and perhaps another member that has more knowledge and is reading this will take the time to explain it all. But In short, I don't think that you need to be worried.

Mark, if you ever get to Munich we can arrange some music and beer. In a similar way to your 3's, the 7's have been my Babies for a long time. One of my kids will inherit them, but as long as I am alive they will be here getting used. I have a short thread about them if you are interested:
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...uild-and-modding-ribbon-tweeter-model.545406/

Cheers,
James
 
James, thanks for the crossover schematic, it is quite simple.
I looked over your thread on the 7 refit. I see you know well what you're doing.

As for me, with all the necessary repairs going on, I added a beauty the other day and just today it came on full force.
Me!
Here's some advice... don't try to lift a motorcycle by yourself.
The other day I needed to move my other bike away from the wall of my shed to add some case sliders. So instead of working it back and forth, I picked up the rear by the wheel to slide it over (which I've done before) but this time.. POW!
Instant back pain. No popping, which is good, so I probably damaged a muscle. It was ok for a while but when I glued and clamped the S3 cabinet, with all the bending over, then doing the same with some repairs on my motorcycle fuel tank, my back was having none of it. It let me know about it today. I hope it's not permanent.

All I managed to do today was go to a fabric store to pick up some polyfil. They didn't have the bamboo stuff so I got polyester fill. 5 pounds. Should be plenty.
I have to rework the front panel so that my mid and woofer sit better.

And of course, if you ever come to Boston, things have changed. There's many local breweries that rival even German breweries. I'll show you.
:beerchug:
 
donbene said:
Here is the crossover schematic for the Speakerlab 3s. This is probably from the mid 70s.

View attachment 2170034
Click to expand...

Nice donbene! Thanks for that.

I see that you are in my old stomping grounds. I lived and worked in and around Tacoma for a long time.

Cheers,
James

edit: I haven't done much on keeping track of the different addresses that Speakerlab had, but we could probably get a date spread/limit on that document from the address.
 
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