component selection on a rebuild help

[chrisgazzola]

Ok dont bash me please, In new.

My Dad dropped off some vintage Bose 501 that he LOVES as he is the original owner since 1977.

They are old and sound bad for a number of reasons including they are Bose 501.

They are a 2 way system consisting of a sealed 10" in a roughly 1 foot cube space and (2) HF drivers (2) per speaker and they are open air, no cavity they are old cheep paper cone.
The LF drivers are 4 ohm and the HF are 4 ohm
The speaker is a 4 ohm speaker.

The only real damage is the 10" drivers which are in need of new surrounds.
One midrange/tweeter may need some tlc?

I have 3 avenue's

1
re-foam the old LF 10" drivers

2
Replace old LF drivers with
Goldwood GW-10PC-40-4 10" Heavy Duty Woofer 4 Ohm
(or your better suggestions here)

3
Replace HF with ??? HiVi TN25 Fabric Dome Tweeter
and
replace old LF drivers with a
Goldwood GW-10PC-40-4 10" Heavy Duty Woofer 4 Ohm
and
Replace old x-over with a
Dayton XO2W-3K 2-Way Crossover 3,000 Hz
(or your better suggestions here)

They are for my DAD I run some Kef 104.2

I know they will not sound the same with added drivers and reconfiguring the x-over.

They are for my Dad.

I know I should pour concrete in them and use them to stabilize my apple tree.

They are for my Dad.

Thanks for your positive contributions.



Chris


HF = High frequency
LF= Low frequency

[spasticteapot]

Go buy him some Dynaco A25s. Good speakers - and, very likely, what he wished he could've bought.

Alternately, try some 10" coaxials - I know that Adire did one.

[Paul Carmody]

My Dad dropped off some vintage Bose 501 that he LOVES as he is the original owner since 1977.

The only real damage is the 10" drivers which are in need of new surrounds.
One midrange/tweeter may need some tlc?

OK, you're hard pressed to find a B-se fan here. But I'm not here to poo poo people's taste. If your father loves these speakers, then maybe the nicest thing to do would be to re-hab them. Re-foaming really works. I made my dad happy as a clam by re-foaming his old favorite pair of Cerwin Vegas.

The only caveat here is that I think a lot of B-se drivers are slightly different sizes than normal. So double-check that the 10" re-foam kit will match the woofers. There may be a specific re-foam kit for that 501 speaker.

Good luck!

[johnastockman]

I agree with Paul...if your dad loves these speakers, re-foam the woofers. As long as the cones aren't damaged, this will preserve the sound quality (no I didn't say that) he likes. Don't put an off-the-shelf crossover in there. I'm not up on the 501's but there might just be a cap on the tweeter. If the cap has a value stamped on it somewhere, you could get a poly cap of the same value. With the drivers bose used, the poly cap might not improve the sound quality, but they stay close to the stated value more so than old electrolytics. Here's a link to some nice folks that have surround repair kits for many different drivers. They can even do repairs for you if you send 'em the drivers.

www.speakerrepair.com

They have the slightly odd-sized surrounds for proprietary drivers like Advent and Cerwin Vega used. The Advent was like an 8" cone in a 10" frame and the CV's had those red surrounds.

John A.