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Frazier Symphonetta


Trippigs

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Marvel.....those 8 nuts/bolts hold the speaker grill on. Probably one reason they are both still present. 

Today I took the grill off the slotted cabinet to get a look at the mid/high driver. To my surprise the black cone is attached to the back of the screen with brads and it is not designed to be removed. And it appears to be made of wood! So, I still have not seen the mid/high driver. Something else interesting is that their is no crossover present. Earlier you said the big “capacitor” might be a splitter. Could you please help me understand that? 

The cabinets cleaned up nicely with Howard’s products.

Thanks.....Wm

 

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1 hour ago, Trippigs said:

Earlier you said the big “capacitor” might be a splitter. Could you please help me understand that?  

 

Nope, I didn't mention the capacitor, just the wood cone in front of the woofer. I'll find a couple drawing on my pc to explain.

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The capacitor represents varying impedance to alternating current signals based on frequency.  Starts out high impedance at low frequencies and tapers off as the frequency goes up.  Eventually the impedance will match that of the high-frequency driver and that will be the "crossover frequency".  The capacitor impedance continues to decrease from there and eventually gets out of the way, enough.

 

A single capacitor is a "first order" high-pass filter (crossover), so the driver it's hooked to still carries a fair amount of signal below the crossover frequency.

 

The woofer in this case is being run full-range.  It would have a coil of wire (inductor) of a certain size feeding it to attenuate high frequencies in a complementary way to the capacitor on the tweeter.  But the woofer in this case loses output as the frequencies go up, both on it's own and, very likely, what's still there is being further blocked by the cone attached to the back of the grill.

 

If you can read a microfarad (uF) value on the capacitor, or find out from literature what it should be, you'd do well to replace it with a new one.  The higher the value the lower the frequency the tweeter will reproduce.  That ancient unit is more than likely not working correctly any longer, so either the tweeter will be getting too much power or not enough.  Definitely worth a few bucks to replace.

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Hello Glens....thanks so much for the great explanation. I now understand the function of the big cap and the lack of a crossover. Earlier I was a bit concerned that the crossover had been removed and never replaced. I will look into replacing the capacitor

FC9AAB3A-C4FC-4335-A9ED-2CAC65D9DBAA.jpeg

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I purchased two new Sonicap capacitors (3uf/200vdc) from Bob Crites who recommended these as replacements for the vintage Tiger capacitors. Ordered them yesterday and they arrived today.....very nice company. Just installed the new capacitor in the slotted cabinet. Wow...a huge improvements! I don’t think the tweeter was working at all with the old cap.

 

now the doghouse cabinet tweeter is still working with whatever capacitor is there. Getting to the capacitor is a major task because the entire bottom of the cabinet has to be removed.  I don’t want to chip the edges of the cabinet so I am going to leave it as is for now. I might take this on later.

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I decided to very carefully remove the bottom of the doghouse cabinet to take a look inside.....18 old screws! Once inside I found the capacitor was not original so I replaced it with the new Sonicap. I believe both drivers are working but I have not done any critical listening. I plan to hook up a better source before doing so........currently using an old beater Pioneer receiver because I did not to damage anything better while testing the Frazier’s. 

 

Check out Frazier’s version of a doghouse!

2D107A41-AE2F-4F3B-BBCB-CA1F9F690DFD.jpeg

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  • 3 years later...

I hope you don't mind that I resuscitated this three year old thread.

I have a Frazier Symphonetta that I acquired around 25 years ago but I never bothered to research it online until today.

There is no evidence that it ever had a metal tag and there is no serial number.  It only has a paper tag identifying it as a Symphonetta.

It appears to have the same mahogany veneer and does have fiberglass insulation in the ports like the original poster's doghouse speaker.  It also has a volume pot as shown in the photos.

1 Symphonetta.JPG

2 Symphonetta.JPG

3 Symphonetta.JPG

6 Symphonetta.JPG

5 Symphonetta.JPG

7 Symphonetta.JPG

8 Symphonetta.JPG

9 Symphonetta.JPG

10 Symphonetta.JPG

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  • 11 months later...

I wound up buying the speakers in this thread from a guy in Arkansas. He drove them down last week when he came to visit family in Dallas. I was super excited to get them! However, when I hooked them up, they sounded like absolute garbage! Somewhere, someone took the original drivers out and swapped them for garbage bottom of the barrel drivers. In fact, the bass drivers hit the front deflector because there is no clearance! Can the original poster of this thread give me some insight?

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