Entertaining the thought of someday getting something like a Realistic SA-150 amp to hook these to and use with the computer 🤔 Also, I should have taken out one of the tweeters and shown them - they are insane. Enormous magnets, and weigh about a pound. For a tweeter.
Im going to use a pair of Optimus bookshelf for my front heights in a 7.1.4 DolbyAtmos home theater, I replaced both drivers with Pyles, now they're OptimusPyle speakers! LOL
Correct, VWestlife. The Minimus 7's were designed to be sold together with the Realistic STA-7 mini-receiver, which cranked out 11 watts per channel RMS into 8 ohms. The STA-7 had an "eq" switch which matched the Minimus 7's not-exactly-ruler-straight response curve. BTW, these are Minimus 7W's. The Minimus 7's had a cast aluminum case.
The fabric surround has less resistance and it looks like that new speaker is not fully sealed as the original is because it does not fit flush. Hence it rebounds more quickly than the originals. If I were you I've find a single Minimus and cannablize its driver so that you have a matching set. Then put the new driver in that one to use as a mono unit somewhere. It's pretty easy to find these, many thousands were sold and they're always on ebay. The problem? They're not as cheap as they used to be. I have a couple of pairs myself. The 7W wood units and the cast aluminum black. I use them as computer speakers with a class D Lepai amp from parts express. All in, an extremely cheap PC solution a few years ago. Not as cheap these days though.
The driver snapping back immediately in the modified speaker is lack of proper seal for a bass-reflex system. Plus the replacement driver has what looks like a cheap fabric surround, not foam or rubber, so maybe that fabric surround is porous and vents a tiny bit of air?
I think there's only one _real_ test to see if speakers are matched or not. If you weren't specifically looking for a difference, would you notice? I don't think I would with this pair.
Foster made great drivers, even Plessey put their name on them (80's) after they used the Rola design (70's) after the Rola factory burnt to the ground in Australia
I have a tiny set of jetsound speakers with 4" or 5" drivers that I use for my rear surround sound speakers. They are kinda rare. I had them apart once to reglue the surround on one and wow was I ever impressed. The magnets on these are mad crazy huge. They are a 2way speaker like what you have there, both drivers are of a paper cone veriety, at least the tweeter, think the woofer might be poly. its thick whatever it is made of. With the metalic dustcap some might say makes them look cheap, don't be fooled! They have rubber surrounds on them and they are heavy! They are small enough you can pick them up with one hand if you dont drop it that is, and I think they originally were intended to be used in automotive and boat type aplications. I think the cabinets are metal or very thick plastic. Mesh grills that can come off, and nice +_ spring clip terminals on the back. They can put out a fair amount of bass, rated at 4ohm each. Used them to listen to some vinyl once and they do sound nice alone for a compact listening station setup. In my case I ran them from a sony amp. ugh I'v ran into that same exact problem when swapping over speakers. Theres gotta be some kind of standard to make sure you have the clearance mesured out before purchicing a replacement to drop in. In one case where it was a somewhat meh or low-mid tear speaker I didn't care too much about, I just kinda forced it a little and it worked fine. Sure the metal frame of the basket bent a little but it didn't matter a whole lot in my case. Were these 5" drivers for the woofers?
Noticing the 'good' speaker is missing a grill mount peg - maybe you could snag a pag from the fail speaker? Maybe also give the 'good' speaker the grill cover?
That's actually a good descriptor of what I hear from the original driver. Although I'm not sure I get much high-end either - it just sounds muddy overall. Of course, my perception might be biased by how bright the new driver sounds. It's strange though - the Minimus-7 seems to span the entire gamut of reviews. Some people say they don't sound that great, while others (most) say that they are fantastic, with many recording studios and radio and TV stations using them for their apparently monitor-grade reproduction. So were these just hit-and-miss in terms of quality? Or perhaps age-related deterioration of the drivers?
@@themaritimegirl I've owned a couple pairs of these over the years along with some of the bigger model I think...Minimus 10s or something like that? I can't quite remember. My experience with them has been that they're a solid speakers for the price they were sold for with the tendency for the woofers to go bad. I had one that had a rubbing coil I had to replace back in the day. I would guess that the design of the speaker was pretty good but the quality control from whoever made the woofers wasn't exactly 100%. I've seen the same as you. Broadcast seems to love them, enthusiasts of vintage audio seem to have a mixed opinion and the discerning audiophile more than likely hates the hole in the midrange effect enough to ree at them pretty hard. Personally, I think they're fine. They're not amazing, they're not garbage, but they are pretty damn solid and that's something you don't always find in a speaker. I used to use a pair as computer speakers and loved them for that purpose! Especially with an amplifier with a loudness curve.
@@lmull3 Ah, so the bad woofer in mine wasn't a one-off occurrence? Very interesting. I guess it's good that I didn't buy an identical new-old stock replacement then, as much as I wanted to. At the very least, they have a fantastic cabinet to fit with new drivers if needed/desired.
@@themaritimegirl No, definitely not at least in my experience. I bought an OEM replacement and it was completely fine though, so I guess results may vary is the best way to describe that whole situation. Yeah, for sure. The wood version of those is by far the best cabinet of all of them. The metal cabinet doesn't sound nearly that nice.
Unless there's something to identify who made them for sure there's no real way to tell, and being before internet there is likely no records online. The old trick of telling you a new speaker will sound better after so many hours use... they mean your ears will ajust to the speaker's sound but the speaker stays the same... a trick. A speaker with a brighter dialogue resolution is actually very good for tv & films, especially late at night in apartments (we call them flats in UK)
You're not the first person I've seen argue that speaker break-in is a myth, but it is very much a real thing - people have used instruments to directly measure the characteristics of a speaker before and after break-in. On a new speaker, the spider and surround are stiffer because they've never been flexed. I've observed it myself - after I finished installing our ceiling speaker system at work, and left it to play overnight, I had to turn down the volume the following morning because the speakers had gotten noticeably louder after 16 hours of playing.
IDK a broken in speaker gets louder, I notice the bass gets better, my new speakers are Klipsch R15M, Polk T15, Dayton B652AIR, micca MB42, Monoprice 65RT@@themaritimegirl
