I Found Some New-Old-Stock Forty-Year-Old Utah Speakers. Unbelievable!

November 19, 2018 

#290

Gentle reader,

It was one of those right time, right place kind of things. We'd gone to the local Salvation Army on Saturday. It was the store where I have found more vintage electronics than any other place. And countless LPs and CDs too.

But, like you may have experienced finding any interesting electronics these days is becoming more and more rare.

They had a silver MCS stereo receiver, you remember, the ones they sold through J.C.Penney? It was not a particularly high end one, but interesting looking. For some reason they had NO speakers. They always have all kinds of speakers. I wanted to test the receiver, but how?

At that point, my wife walked up and said, "What about those?" Pointing above and behind me. "Utah speakers! No way! Those things are legendary."

You see, they had decided to rearrange and placed small appliances in with the electronics and electronics with the small appliances. Who does that?

I proceeded to test them and the receiver. Sadly someone had removed the price tag from the MCS receiver and they will not sell anything without a price on it. Oh, it worked fine, too.

On the speaker's tag it reads: "Utah New-Old-Stock Speakers (2)" That explained the incredible condition of these Utah model AS-2AX bookshelf speakers. I can only assume in their infinite lack of wisdom, they took them out of their boxes to display them. No doubt tossing the old boxes.
Here's the cool thing. They set them out on November 1st. She pointed them out to me on the 17th! So, for more than two weeks, nobody else saw them either. Meant to be? It seems so.

Beautifully made cabinets with real black walnut veneers. As you can see, they are two-way units. They veneered BOTH sides of the particle board. An unnecessary expense. Both are that way.

Being perhaps forty years old, the wood was quite dry, I would fix that. Below and in other photos, you can see the veneer on the inside walls.

When I tested them, I heard noises from one of the woofers. That did not deter me. The price was right and I was anxious to own them and paid the $25.99. Note that they still have the rubber covers on the RCA terminal.

As you know, I carry a test kit with me when we go to thrift stores. It includes: A music cassette, a pair of RCA stereo interconnects, a power cord; the kind with a figure-8 plug on the end, and a pair of cheap speaker wires.

But at home, I use large gauge speaker cables and banana plugs. I was about to make up some smaller patch cables to test them here and determine which one had the woofer noise. 

Then I remembered the double banana plugs that I'd used to hook up the meters and switch for the system in the listening room. I told you all about that.

Once I determined which was ailing, I set up the folding table and put it face down to remove the back.

Once the back was off, I found a piece of fiberglass which looked like it had been tossed in as an afterthought. Low morale at the Utah factory?

Oddly, some of the metal was corroded inside, especially around the tweeter magnet.

I know it's silly, but the OCD part of me feels that black wires are ground and red are hot or positive. Apparently Utah did not subscribe to that notion.
The "crossover" consists of a non-polarized 50 volt capacitor. No frequency or capacitance number on it, so I have no idea of the crossover frequency. 

Being made in the USA, the nuts were 5/16" and easy to get off. 

The woofer definitely had an issue. I looked for a replacement on line, but no luck.
I contacted Cy Beam via eBay, telling him the problem to see if he had one. He didn't but gave me a suggestion.
I followed his advice, carefully cutting off the dust cap. There was no debris as he suggested. However, I could see the cone was slightly off center. By moving the cone back and forth I watched debris being rubbed off of the inside of the voice coil. Ah-ha. 
I carefully used an Exacto knife blade to scrape the offending surface area. Pausing to blow it out with canned air, each time.
I kept moving the cone out and in and blowing out the detritus until it no longer rubbed off.
Finally, the rubbing sound was gone and I put it back together to confirm that I'd solved the problem.
Satisfied with the results, I took it back apart and carefully reglued the cap back on. Like my Advent Baby Advent II speakers, the dust cap on these were made of screen to prevent the air from compressing and hindering the woofer's movements.

I folded the fiberglass in two, as you can see, above.  I vacuumed all the corrosion and other dust from the inside of the cabinet.

To correct the minimalist effort of the factory worker, I added polyfill mats over the fiberglass.

Then some loose polyfill on top of that. This will improve the bass performance of the woofer by making it "think" it was in a larger cabinet.

The second speaker had no corrosion and also, no foam tape to seal the back. Note that the tweeter is 90 degrees off in this one. I left it alone. Take that, OCD!

At least the fiberglass in this one was the correct length. I repeated my steps with this one, including vacuuming any dust or dirt from the inside of the cabinet.
I also added foam tape so that the back would be airtight. 

Above shows how dull the wood was. I carefully cleaned all the surfaces prior to oiling the wood.

To avoid getting oil on the grille cloth and back of the cabinets, I taped them off with painter's tape.

Just look at these photos, what a difference Boiled Linseed Oil makes on wood! I used to use Tung Oil, but it is hard to find without polyurethane being added to it. 

Plus, the papers that came with my Dynaco A25XL speakers specifically recommended Boiled Linseed Oil. The boiled part was critical.

Of course, there is ZERO information to be found on the Internet about most Utah speakers. I did find one site that had scanned pages from a brochure. Not these models, though.

Too bad, but I estimate they were made in the 1970's. I'm very pleasantly surprised at just how good they sound!
In fact, I'm listening to them right now. I have to be careful since they are rated at 12 watts. Maximum of minimum? 

Most of us poo-poo cone tweeters. But they do the job. Dome tweeters may disperse the sound better, but I would never guess these were cones by the sound.

I have see in my various FaceBook vintage audio groups folks praising their vintage Utah speakers. While these are not high quality or have coaxial or full-range drivers like some models, they certainly look and sound terrific. I'm going to keep them for a while. Plus, I love the look of black walnut.

While I had the Boiled Linseed Oil out, I also did the cabinets of the LX4 speakers. 

Thank you once again, for taking the time to read my humble blog. It is your valued comments that keep me working on new stories to entertain and hopefully enlighten you.

Scott
November 19, 2018
#290

PS A few days ago, a new milestone was reached: 200,000 page views! I am SO grateful!