XP Series Speakers 1959-1973

[RMS 330]

Found a pair of 111 k at salval. 50$ price tag. Should I grab them? Pretty good shape. Have chains weaved thru the grills so they have probably been hanging somewhere for a long time

 

[eiraved]

What make? Fisher and Fender make XP speakers, or is it some other? Pictures would help...
EDIT: did not notice how old this post was, or that it was a Fisher post LOL!

 

[RMS 330]

The Fisher. Brought em. One bad spot on one can. Will post pics as restoration progresses

 

[larryderouin]

Take some Before pics now and post for I.D. and comparison.

 

[RMS 330]

Rocked em for about an hour then pulled the grills. Don't sound bad, don't sound great. Was very pleased to see that all the drivers are intact and I believe functioning.
Wood veneer with real walnut trim on the front surrounding the grills.

Probably add more info tomorrow as time allows

 

[f0427ea]

use the cardboard tube from a paper towel roll to check the mids and tweeters , if their all working , give the speakers some time to loosen up and the caps to reform. IME every old set of Fishers (or any brand for that matter , but especially Fisher XP's , for some unknown reason) that have not been used for a while , sounded kinda blah when I first ran them. As long as the capacitors were passing a signal , given some exercise for a few days , a week or so , the speakers came back to life and sounded 100% better . As they were intended to sound when new , well..........maybe , maybe not , but close enough for rock-n-roll.

 

[RMS 330]

My observations shown in the pics above.
Definitely intended to be an air tight cabinet. There is some type of sealer slathered on and around all the drivers. May make it difficult to pry them gently out. In addition, the factory dope that is mentioned in this thread is generously applied to the woofers. It also looks to be applied to all the drivers. You may be able to see in the pics how shiny all the surrounds are, and I believe that is why.
The grills are plastic and held on by 4 small screws, 1 in each corner. The ridiculous shiny fabric is attached to a 1/4" thick hardboard of some type and may have been glued to the back of the plastic grill. I can't imagine these grills not affecting the dispersion of the intended sound.
The 111 designation appears to be for the speaker series itself (pic1). The K may just be an indication of the grill style (pic 2).
I'll post more when I get them opened up.
Question. "rolled off highs", Does that mean they are inadequate? Cause when I played them, I could hear some high sounds that I rarely hear.

 

[RMS 330]

use the cardboard tube from a paper towel roll to check the mids and tweeters , if their all working , give the speakers some time to loosen up and the caps to reform. IME every old set of Fishers (or any brand for that matter , but especially Fisher XP's , for some unknown reason) that have not been used for a while , sounded kinda blah when I first ran them. As long as the capacitors were passing a signal , given some exercise for a few days , a week or so , the speakers came back to life and sounded 100% better . As they were intended to sound when new , well..........maybe , maybe not , but close enough for rock-n-roll.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check to see if they all work. But I'm gonna tear em down and clean em before hooking em up to a house stereo. They smell way worse than they look. I hooked up in my car for the ride home for the initial testing (was not pleasant). Then put hem on the work bench to photograph. When I walked in the back door the wife asked if I ran over a skunk (I said, Yes I Did) and she made me disrobe on the spot, LOL. I could not possibly tell her I paid $50 to acquire that fragrance.

 

[larryderouin]

Page 2, post 38 of this thread has everything THERED1 has gotten thru the years on the 111K. Apparently it's a 1973 model only.
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...speakers-1959-1973.479002/page-2#post-6240364

 

[RMS 330]

So the drivers were not that difficult to remove. They have a sealer (not glue) that has remained extremely flexible after 45 years. Perhaps someone can identify the drivers as having been borrowed from the XP-? lineup, or only used in the 111's.
The 12" woofer has a number clearly stamped along with The Fisher sticker.. It also has a membrane enclosing the magnet on both sides within its steel frame. WHY?
There's the crossover covered by what appears to be multiple batts of R-11 insulation. The mids have The Fisher sticker covering any stamp that may be there. The tweeters are Not so clearly stamped after the T-304. "Made in ?" maybe.
Super tweeters are made in Denmark. No connector, just a small wire protruding from the frame and soldered to the speaker wire.
All the smaller drivers are enclosed by there metal frame. Is that part of the air tight seal of acoustic suspension speakers?

 

[RMS 330]

Here's the nudies of the 4 way crossover. Don't know if it is anything special or if anything should be replaced. Hope someone chimes in about that.

After all the effort for a hermetic seal put into this box, I remove the 4 screws from the board holding the x-over and controls, it slides right off. No glue. No sealer. Monday morning assembly? IDK.

 

[drumbum]

All the smaller drivers are enclosed by there metal frame. Is that part of the air tight seal of acoustic suspension speakers?

The sealed back drivers keep them from being "passive radiators" in a sense, when the woofer is doing its thing.

If not a sealed back design, a separate chamber needs to be incorporated.

 

[larryderouin]

The "membrane" (at least on 60's Woofers by FISHER) is an aluminum plug on both sides of the woofer magnet. To keep out any contaminents. As drumbum said the smaller drivers are solid backed to keep them from becoming passive radiators off the woofer. Crossover, replace all 3 of the black electrolytic capacitors. Check each resistor for spec replace if 10% out. (Check out of Circuit). Clean the pots with DeOxit D5 then lube with Faderlube (F-5).

 

[inperson]

I got a pair of XP55b's from a friend a few years ago. He since has passed but he always managed to find stuff that was in such great condition, 40 year old turntables with super clean dust covers and like new insides, nice amps and such. Anyway, I decided to bring these Fishers up stairs and hook them up to a Denon 210 receiver. I put the speakers on their sides with little rubber feet on those IKEA 4 holed record shelves and I find mine aren't muffled sounding at all, at least not to me. I'm 50. They are both in corners, which helped the bass, but the uppers are fine. I wonder if these are well preserved inside like all the other stuff he found for me? They are not the best speakers I have but dang it I think they sound nice.

 

[just dave]

Hey,
found a speaker at GW yesterday. Can one of you Fish heads ID it I've looked through hundreds of pics and nothing. 15 inch woofer,2- 5 inch mids and a 2 inch tweeter.

 

[KentTeffeteller]

I have always been skeptical about that particular bit of web wisdom. I've certainly never seen any documentation to back that up. Looking at the entire span of Mr. Fisher's involvement in the audio industry and his speaker preferences over that time (1937-1969); it just doesn't make sense. He was one of the pioneers pushing the limits of frequency response at a time when most would have thought such a pursuit pointless given the limitations of 78 records and AM radio.

His home reference system utilized some very exotic Western Electric drivers salvaged from the 1939 World's Fair (and now in the Smithsonian) that were anything but rolled off. After WWII he wrote to all of his old customers advising them to replace the outdated speakers in their Philharmonic consoles (Jensen A-12 field coil w/separate PM-6 tweeter or Cinaudagraph "Magic Magnet" speakers - not too shabby even by today's standards) with the new Altec Duplex speakers - for a "300% improvement." Even as late as 1988, with his aging ears, he was using KEF speakers in his home system. Certainly not the speaker choices of a man who preferred dull, lifeless music.

I think it far more likely that the high frequency drivers and/or the crossovers used on Fisher/United's XP speakers just didn't age well.

EDIT: . . . as confirmed by sipuser above.

Agreed highly on these thoughts. Avery Fisher was a reasonably skilled violinist, and played chamber music often. Never knew of a Classical musician who owned a rolled off HiFi system, they like full frequency response as possible. And Avery Fisher's speakers in his home systems were the opposite of something used by a man who liked dull, lifeless music. Definitely the high frequency drivers aging issues and crossover components have contributed to how Fisher speakers are perceived today.

 

[little-al]

While doing some research on the speaker construction within our Fisher S-695 Statesman console, I ran across a Fisher speaker made for Radio Shack called the ARS Fisher 11c. The badge on the front however says "The Fisher ARS 11c"

From what I can tell via an auction where the bits of an 11c are being sold; the 11c had two 3" CTS tweeters, two 5.75" Rola mid-range drivers, and one 12" Rola woofer. The part numbers of the drivers appear to be identical to those in our Statesman, although the Statesman only has one 3" tweeter. And the crossover design for the 11c is much different than within the Statesman, including a tweeter level control for the 11c that the Statesman doesn't have. So the vintage would probably be late 60s or early 70s I'd guess since our Statesman is a 1970 model?

I found these photos via a quick Internet search, but not much else.

While not an XP series technically, these seem to be close cousins.

 

[Chilibrother]

Hey,View attachment 1722107 View attachment 1722108
found a speaker at GW yesterday. Can one of you Fish heads ID it I've looked through hundreds of pics and nothing. 15 inch woofer,2- 5 inch mids and a 2 inch tweeter.

I realize this does you no good seven months later (sorry) - but at least I can add to the knowledge base that this thread represents.
I got a pair of the same speakers two months ago as part of a system. Based on size and the front grill I was hoping for XP-111k but nope.
This appears to be kind of a Frankenspeaker. Cabinet are drivers are the same as an XP-95 but without level control pots on the front baffle but with the grill of the 111k. Of course level controls wouldn’t be that useful if you had to unscrew a grill to get to them. My guess is that Fisher sold these as part of a complete system.
I refoamed the woofers and put in new caps. They sounded perfectly fine. Very good bass response. A modern dome tweeter would do wonders. Sold them for the cost of the refoam kit and caps and the satisfaction of giving them a second life.

 

[inperson]

How can one tell if their XP-55b's are older models or later 1970's models?

 

[larryderouin]

Grills are different, and if the EIA codes are present (non fisher built drivers like CTS or Rola) you can date pretty close with the EIA code.