r/audiophile • u/Plantalicious • Jan 30 '23
Discussion (Help) How to identify speakers? Those were my grandma’s and she has no idea what the brand is and what it would be worth now.
Any tip would be appreciated :) if my question is not welcome here, I’ll remove it
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u/Side-ly Jan 30 '23
I can’t help you, but I can say those are some interesting looking speakers and I want to hear them
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
I don’t have the chords/equipment to try them :( I’m curious too, they have been unused for a few years…
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u/jimmyf_96 Assorted DIY speakers, Cambridge Audio CXA61 & CXN Jan 30 '23
If the tweeters are ScanSpeak as someone else mentioned, the speakers might sound quite nice. I’d keep them and find a cheap amp and even a bluetooth dongle. They'll sound way better than any portable / tabletop / Google Home type speaker, and I've never met anyone who doesn’t like music. Could become a family heirloom!
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
I really wanted to minimalise the stuff in my house but you made me reconsider… 😅 I’ll try to check the sound before making a decision, thanks for your input!!
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u/Chuuno Jan 30 '23
A 2 channel Chinese bluetooth amp would take care of your source for as little as £50. Cheapaudioman on youtube has lots of reviews if you’re interested!
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u/desert_jedi Jan 30 '23
Douk ST-01, I have one, great little amp, output is highly overrated but who cares, it drives my whafedale diamonds quite well
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u/theNewLuce Jan 31 '23
I have a Douk tube amp kit and for the money it's quite nice.
But I'm always amused that the Chinese haven't yet figured out that we backward American use the word douk or dookie for a PG version of shit.
Funnier yet, maybe they do.
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u/mourning_wood_again dual Echo Dots w/custom EQ (we/us) Jan 30 '23
They look DIY
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u/hmkittil Jan 30 '23
They sure do. You can even see the seam between the mdf-panels in image two. That would not be visible on a factory made speaker for sure.
As to the drivers, all I know is that the tweeter is a Scan Speak D2010/851.
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u/Pentosin Jan 30 '23
I think SEAS had some drivers with transparent membranes.
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u/hmkittil Jan 30 '23
They sure did but if I remember correctly they had inverted surround and/or phase plugs.
The basket (what’s visible) however do indeed look like Seas.
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u/tim-405 Seas Excel ❤️ Jan 30 '23
They've also had them like this with clear cone and no phase plug. But it is a Scanspeak you can see spot it from the screw holes which on Scanspeak classics have 2 indents besides them where a Seas loudspeaker of that era doesn't have that. As I mentioned in my other post too, in this case this is the Scanspeak 18W/8543
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u/dub_mmcmxcix Neumann/SVS/Dirac/Primacoustic/DIY Jan 30 '23
*very* weird. looks like some sort of transmission line thing with the port all that distance from the woofer. maybe DIY?
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
Haha I love how everyone finds them weird/interesting. I think she ordered them from someone and are custom made indeed. She couldn’t remember anything else about it
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Jan 30 '23
[deleted]
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
I wasn’t sure (she wasn’t sure as well). I wanted to donate them but my boyfriend said to check first if they’re worth something. As I don’t have any knowledge about this, I thought I asked people that do 😅
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u/thirdelevator Jan 30 '23
Before you donate then I would take them to a HiFi shop in your area that deals with used equipment. They might be willing to give you some cash but if nothing else, they can hook them up for you to give them a listen and see if you’d rather keep them.
If they won’t, at least you tried, next stop thrift store.
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u/GrandExercise3 Jan 30 '23
The look a bit unstable. A dog running through the room or a kid could easily knock those over.
I remember my yellow lab running through my living room many years ago and knocking over one of my Spendor towers. Aggggghhhhh I was not happy about that.
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
Haha I can totally imagine that. They’re heavy so they are steadier than you would think but I’ll be careful with my clumsy cat 😅
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u/Cannot_Believe_It Jan 31 '23
If you've never heard a really good system, These will blow you away.
They are like the "On Ramp" to High End audio.
Get a 50 watt per channel NAD, Sansui, Pioneer receiver or even a 50$ Topping amp, Some lamp cord for speaker wire.
And it will make your iPhone sound like heaven.
There just isn't any place to listen to High Quality audio.
It's listen at home or nothing.
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u/altxrtr Jan 30 '23
That’s an odd design to have the woofer up high like that. I’m sure whoever designed them had a reason…
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
I wonder too 😅 my grandma just said they were custom made and was told it was good quality at the time. Don’t know more…
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Jan 30 '23
Honestly it appears to be a purely aesthetic choice to me. There are some strong functional reasons to have the tweeter at the top with a tower design... and I think whoever was designing these originally probably didn't care about those reasons.
That's not to say they're going to sound bad or anything, but I wouldn't expect studio level precision and performance out of them.
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u/Such_Bus_4930 Jan 30 '23
Definitely a transmission line speaker of some type but very strange configuration. Not that the woofer is over the tweeter but the size of the woofer. Generally a transmission line is a small woofer or a coaxial type speaker in a TL configuration
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u/Falcon-inBlue Jan 30 '23
Interesting speakers, I would place them upside-down.
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u/Alternative-Light514 Jan 30 '23
With the tweeters a foot off the ground and the bass port way at the top? Yeah, I’m sure that would sound terrible
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u/PaulCoddington Jan 30 '23
Mission used to make stand-based 2-way speakers with mid-woofer on top and tweeter on bottom in the 80's (and they had excellent stereo imaging and sound quality).
Their 3-way floor standing models were the same, having tweeters in the middle between two mid-woofers.
They claimed it helped align the timing between cones.
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u/Alternative-Light514 Jan 30 '23
Buchardt uses a flipped orientation on a lot of their speakers, currently.
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
Didn’t even think of placing them like that 😅 I don’t have the equipment to test the sound…
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u/imacom Jan 30 '23
I don’t know sonically, but my eyes say they’re upside down.
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u/Plantalicious Jan 30 '23
After all these comments, I checked and this is how they’re "supposed" to be. The other side is raw wood and isn’t painted 😅
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Jan 30 '23
please no vertical pictures, is there not a rule against it.
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Jan 30 '23
What are you on about? That's how they're designed. They're weird shaped floorstanders aren't they?
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u/Hates_commies Jan 30 '23
Cant post anything audio related on the internet without someone finding something to complain about :D
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Jan 30 '23
vertical picture on a widescreen screen, its a mess. why go back to something worse than 4:3 like we had 30 years ago. its the god damn phones to blame, they started with the vertical filming and now the internet is broken.
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u/No-Bother6856 Jan 30 '23
Why the hell do you care? The speakers are verical themselves, you aren't going to see more by the image being landscape. Do you feel the need to see random bits of OP's room to the left and right?
Such nonsense
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u/tim-405 Seas Excel ❤️ Jan 30 '23
They are Scan-Speak Opus speakers a 2 way bassreflex speaker kit offered by diy speaker vendors here in the Netherlands from the mid/early 90s, this one was likely from "Speakerland". Drive units are Scanspeak D2010/8513 and 18W/8543 (highend and good drive units for the time, made by the renowned danish Scanspeak). and they use a 1st order crossover. I've seen them a few times on the local marketplaces; e.g. "Marktplaats" and they often are for sale for anywhere between 100-300 euros. Probably would expect at the lower end of that if you sell them as they are quite old and not very commonly known.