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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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In Reply to: Can anyone ID these Wharfedale speakers posted by barhead on April 19, 2010 at 04:01:26:
I have lots of direct experience of the Wharfedale 10's. I have a ceramic magnet pair, and an alnico magnet pair, all in good shape. From the 60's - the cones have '67 and '63 pencilled on them. They were my main speakers for a few years, until I got coaxials. I still listen through them pretty often.
My alnico ones look just like the ones barhead has.
I tried the Wharfedales on OB with various bass support. I tried them in a couple of different front horns (starting with the one in the image), and I tried them as sealed-box mids. I spent ages testing their response with tones and a SPL meter, trying different reversable tweaks. Sticking adhesive felt on the cones worked partially - it moved the peaks around, but never reduced than by more than a couple of dB.
As full rangers, they aren't good enough to use as your main system. They sound nice on some stuff, but rough and shouty on way too much material. Nice on vocals and strings, OK on electronic music, nasty on horns or rock music. Horn-loaded, they are better, but a brute force approach (15" coaxials) is better again, more efficient, and much easier to implement.
Used purely as mids is where they can shine, especially with some non-reversible mods.
Check out the graphs of the super 8, and of the EX3 on Troels' pages (his super 8's look a lot like my ceramic super 10s), and you will see why. He puts them both in his "worst drivers ever had" category.
http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/Lowther.htm
Both are 8" straight-walled whizzered drivers. Both cost a lot when new. Both have midrange efficiency in the low 90's, despite what the manufacturers may claim. Both have a huge phase shift around 3KHz and 20dB peaks in response around and above this frequency. The Lowthers are newer, with many years more tech to draw upon, but still seem to have basically the same problems, implying that the issues are imtrinsic to straight-walled dual cone drivers.
Quoting Troels: "If we want to work with straight-sided cone drivers, we have to be prepared for 4th order filters [...] straight-sided cones can make some of the best midrange available"
The Wharefadales are better than the EX3s in two ways:
a) they are available for cheap or free, so you can modify them without guilt
b) they are flat up to a higher frequency
I have a cheap 3-way active X-over system downstairs: 12" bass drivers in very solid boxes, 3" FR drivers in their own boxes as tweeters. A modded ceramic Wharfedale does mids on one side, a stock alnico Wharfedale on the other.
Mods are:
1) whizzer and aluminium cap removed - I did this years ago. It moved the first peak up from 3KHz to 4KHz, but killed the top octave. Not full range any more, but good for a 2 or 3-way system.
2) treated / sealed surrounds - I did this after seeing Troels' page. Good stuff.
3) damar on the inner part of the cone - why not?
Today I set the X-over at 100 and 4,000Hz and muted the treble to re-analyse the difference that the mods have made. The ceramic driver is a bit more efficient and sounds pretty neutral. Like a really beefy TV speaker. The stock driver is more buzzy and false sounding on top. I played "Stoned and Dethroned", a pretty laid-back, MOR rock album, and the guitar sounded really bad through it, the tone was quite nasty. The mods are good.
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- RE: Can anyone ID these Wharfedale speakers - hollowboy 07/27/1009:20:32 07/27/10 (0)
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