16-03-2018, 06:20 PM
Those columns are a bit on the short side, aren't they, Mike?
Interesting. I think it really depends where you put them. If you stand the concrete columns in the room corners - which used to be the favoured position for floor standing cabinets, anyway, the hard walls would very effectively reflect and focus the sound, so I don't see a problem.
Pye made a corner situation a virtue with its Black Box hi-fi. The speakers were mounted in the sides of the relatively narrow - not much more than a record player of the period - cabinet with the idea being that it should be placed diagonally in the corner of the room so that the sound was reflected off the walls to create a much wider sound stage.
We sold a Hong Kong made pocket transistor radio in the 60s. All of these sets, whether of Japanese or Hong Kong origin were virtually identical electronically and tended to suffer the same problems: battery connector wire pulled off and faulty volume control or the associated switch or, more rarely, detector diode or its load resistor broken due to them being located on the extreme corner of the pcb next to the battery compartment - one whack from the PP3 while fitting it was all it needed!
Anyway, I digress. The only thing that differentiated any of these sets was the variety of plastic cases. The speaker on the sets we sold was mounted in a recess, thus it protruded from the front of the cabinet proper by a couple of mm with a gilt ring round the edge raising slightly more.
The trick, when any of the sets came into the workshop was to lay the set on its back and place a tube over the speaker - usually a handy copy of a Trader magazine with an elastic band round it to hold it onto the radio.
The bass response that these little sets suddenly produced was amazing!
I spotted an extension speaker in Woollies one day. It was the usual 3" speaker mounted in the centre of a 3" tube about 10" or so long. I never heard one but I expect it sounded good!
(16-03-2018, 04:04 PM)Crackle Wrote: But they do have an interesting effect on the dispersal of the sound, making it more difficult to get an exact location of the sound source.
Interesting. I think it really depends where you put them. If you stand the concrete columns in the room corners - which used to be the favoured position for floor standing cabinets, anyway, the hard walls would very effectively reflect and focus the sound, so I don't see a problem.
Pye made a corner situation a virtue with its Black Box hi-fi. The speakers were mounted in the sides of the relatively narrow - not much more than a record player of the period - cabinet with the idea being that it should be placed diagonally in the corner of the room so that the sound was reflected off the walls to create a much wider sound stage.
We sold a Hong Kong made pocket transistor radio in the 60s. All of these sets, whether of Japanese or Hong Kong origin were virtually identical electronically and tended to suffer the same problems: battery connector wire pulled off and faulty volume control or the associated switch or, more rarely, detector diode or its load resistor broken due to them being located on the extreme corner of the pcb next to the battery compartment - one whack from the PP3 while fitting it was all it needed!
Anyway, I digress. The only thing that differentiated any of these sets was the variety of plastic cases. The speaker on the sets we sold was mounted in a recess, thus it protruded from the front of the cabinet proper by a couple of mm with a gilt ring round the edge raising slightly more.
The trick, when any of the sets came into the workshop was to lay the set on its back and place a tube over the speaker - usually a handy copy of a Trader magazine with an elastic band round it to hold it onto the radio.
The bass response that these little sets suddenly produced was amazing!
I spotted an extension speaker in Woollies one day. It was the usual 3" speaker mounted in the centre of a 3" tube about 10" or so long. I never heard one but I expect it sounded good!
