Some new speakers for the living room and family room.

Gentle reader,

It's been a while since I posted, I've been busy with many things. Last weekend, my wife who now owns 12, count 'em, 12 guns, was trying out the airsoft ones including the SCAR fully auto rifle.

She said, "I'm liking this too much!"

Back to the subject of this posting.If you've followed this blog, for which I am VERY grateful, you may recall that I was using Definitive Technology speakers for the front and center in the living room. Because the center speaker was vertical, I built a wooden box to raise the HDTV up so that none of the picture was obscured by that speaker.

Well, I came across, at The Village Thrift Store, a pair of Cambridge Soundworks speakers in white and a center channel speaker in black. Cost for all three was less than $10.00. Turns out the center speaker had a buzz at certain frequencys. So, ebay to the rescue. I found the higher end center channel speaker and it was large enough to support the HDTV as well. Below is the result:

The screen, despite my using a softbox and bouncing the flash, had a huge white flare. Since I have no idea how to replace a color, I simply deleted it. That works. Below is a close up of all three speakers.

While they look crooked in these photos, above you can see they are truly straight. Just saying...

Above and below, you can see the size and driver size and quality differences of the cheaper verses more expensive (when new and used) center channel speakers designed by Henry Kloss of vintage speaker fame. He designed the most famous and best selling, and sounding, speakers of what some call the "golden age" of home stereo components.

Note the simpler cone tweeter in the smaller unit verses the dome tweeter of the larger unit. Also note the larger bass reflex drivers of the larger unit verses the smaller "acoustic suspension" drivers in the smaller unit. It all matters.

Lastly, note the all-metal gold plated terminals verses plastic ones in the cheaper and smaller center speaker.

Now for something different and older. Down in our family room, we rearranged and placed the very heavy, solid wood "entertainment center" in the corner at a 45 degree (there-about) angle. This makes that portion of the room cozier and my wife's favorite place to be. She loves her recliner. I came across a Pioneer "Virtual Surround Sound" sound bar and subwoofer at Salvation Army. The price was right, $22.50 but it was missing one of the special cables to make it all work. The ONLY place to find it was Pioneer itself. $42.50 plus shipping later, it finally arrived. Below is a series of photos of the pieces.

As you can see, I took the sub all apart to see what it all had. 

I believe the larger device on the left, below, is the chip for the subwoofer and the two transistors are for left and right of the sound bar speakers. Pretty large heat sink for them.

It had the cable for "A" but "B" was what I needed to buy.

Note the stacked magnets on the woofer.

Now all back together. I added some polyfil to the cabinet to improve the sound.

Below are several views of the sound bar.

So, it was made way back in 1998, but I can find NOTHING about these devices on the Internet!

Below is the sound bar "in situ" as they say in Latin. As if anyone actually speaks Latin!

 

So, there you have it! What she hasn't seen and will no doubt howl about, is the NIP Radio Shack audio/video switcher I found for less than $9.00 at The Village! With that we can have the best picture with any of the components!

Thanks for looking!

Scott