66ish Admiral Radio RestoMod - Am I doing this right?

[Colorado Darren]

Hey guys, thanks for letting me join the board!

The other day my wife and I found this old Admiral radio at ReStore for $12! It doesn't work, so my plan is to put a small TV under the lid, an Apple TV, maybe an Xbox, replace the speakers, and hook it all up to an old Pioneer receiver I have lying around. Classic looks, modern gear. I was hoping you guys would be willing to give me some advice on making this sound decent. I'm poor but I'm handy, so doing this on a budget is much more important to me than perfect sound.

These are the speakers I'm thinking of getting from this site;
2x Goldwood GW-212/4 12" Woofer
2x Visaton FR13-4 5" Speaker
2x Visaton FR8TA 3.3" Speaker
2x Goldwood GT-1025 3"x7" Horn

Those would be direct replacements for the speakers that were in there. Is that a good plan? I'm a total dummy so I'm open to any input. Do I need the horns? I don't see them in many home audio systems anymore. My last question is crossover related. I was looking at what crossover I'd need and realized I was in way over my head so I'd love some advice there.

Thank you for the help, and if you guys are interested I'll update this as it progresses.

[djg]

If I had this console, I would cut the crosses out of the woofer holes, buy or build a pair of 6" or so two way speakers, mount them behind the fascia, tilted up to point the tweeters to your listening position, and cover with some new vintage grill cloth from ebay. And refinish it.

Electronics whatever you desire.

[Brian Steele]

Yeah, you're probably not going to get good results if you use all of those speakers, particularly if you don't know how to design a x-over.

I'd suggest going for a simpler three-way arrangement (e.g. 10" + 3" + 1" dome, which means that you'd have to replace the existing baffle with a new one to hold the new drivers. Check the Parts Express projects page to see if there are any projects that use drivers of similar sizes - those should give you more ideas re which drivers to use.

Good luck on your rebuild....!

[djg]

I always forget, Wolf's Zingers would be perfect. These are a two way using an 8" DVC subwoofer. Inexpensive, kit available, truly full range. You would need to cut out most of the original baffles.

My interpretation.

[LOUT]

Sorry, this doesn't really apply to what you're doing, but I'm curious why that was built with the baffles/drivers in that orientation instead of a rotated version of the baffle (which looks like it should've fit and given more balanced horizontal dispersion).

[djg]

Dude, it was the 60s.

[LOUT]

I'm guessing you're at least partially joking (because I keep hearing examples of how old a lot of this information is), but nevermind the sideways M/m/T arrangement, even somebody who knows nothing about sound can probably guess which direction/orientation that horn will blast wide VS narrow.
Then again, I don't know how much/little the horn shape/dispersion affects the very highest frequencies where wavelengths are super short, and I don't know how low that horn-tweeter is setup to play. Maybe that doesn't make much difference in some situations?

Lol, I know juuust enough to be bothered by seeing it, but don't know enough to tell if it really makes a meaningful difference.

[djg]

I'm thinking whoever designed this was a furniture designer, not a sound engineer. I remember these consoles (in general, not this specific one), the sound was ok, not stellar.

[fpitas]

I agree with djg and others, install decent recent speakers like the Zingers, or build a kit. Unless you just want to learn speaker design. Like everybody is saying, those old baffles aren't very sensible. And crossover design has made grown men cry.

[LOUT]

And crossover design has made grown men cry.

Learning to build his first XO on a budget-driver 4way, Colorado Daren isn't capable of tears. Too powerful for them to squeeze through.


More seriously though, I feel like many of these consoles I've seen have wanted an 8ohm load. Double checking the required impedance might be a good first plan if it hasn't been done already.

[fpitas]

Learning to build his first XO on a budget-driver 4way, Colorado Daren isn't capable of tears. Too powerful for them to squeeze through.

Oh yeah. That's a terrible place to start.

[LOUT]

For fun I grabbed traces for the drivers in the first post, just to see how they felt to sim with (not bothering with offsets and diffraction and off-axis response).
The 12" seems to be doing odd things as if the .zma is wonky despite it appearing fine (adding resistance is lowering impedance in some narrow places even when the resistor is the only XO part), the 3.3" has low efficiency and low power-handling that limits most/any design to ~15watts or lower plus it has a narrow ~6db dip in the middle of its response where the driver is probably needed the most, and that Goldwood 1025 horn piezo starts with a ~15db V-shaped cut in the middle of its response (at least in their specs).
At this point I pretty much hate 3/4 of these speakers, lol.

I think the Zingers should reach lower (down near 30hz instead of the 40hz+ range) and at least a few db louder (not limited by a 10-15watt 3" midwoofer).

[fpitas]

I respect working on a budget, but sometimes you can set yourself up for failure.

[fpitas]

Having said that, some people here have achieved amazing results with very low-priced drivers. Pulling that off takes a lot of experience and talent, though.

[[email protected]]

I just finished a Resto mod on my 1962 Fisher Electra VE46X. The amp and tuner are in amazing condition but the speakers were exhausted. These cabinets were designed mostly for looks and ease of use not their audiophile sound. That being said in my opinion any box can be reinforced, vented and stuffed to sound better. For my project I used Dayton Classic 12 woofer, a LaVoce 4" full range for mids and Dayton soft dome tweeter. I used Dayton 260-152 crossover 500/4000, 3" tapered port 8" long and stuffed the cabinet with a of fiberfill. One of the odd things I found as I dismantled the vintage crossover was there was only one inductor. The frequency divider used the inductance of the remaining speakers and giant resistors to compensate for uneven component matching. The point is they did some strange things for economy not great sound.

[fpitas]

Well, that format is about the worst you could choose for the sound. Convenience and economy was the idea. And I imagine WAF played a factor, too.