godcity wrote:
I've got some Urei 809's soffit mounted in my control room. I went to
all the trouble of soffit mounting them only to learn that i don't
really care for them. my studio designer said "trust me" but i'm still
not impressed. There's some tears in the cones, though. They are
quite old and run down. I could possibly have them reconed.
But does anyone have any ideas either for speaker cabinets of the same
dimensions that would fit in the soffits, or for some sort of speaker
upgrade that would drop into the existing cabinet? Maybe there's a
good coaxial 12" out there that I could use? The JBL 2142H came up on
a quick google search. Freq response curve sucks, though.
I'm not opposed to DIY'ing something into the Urei box.

1. Have you ever heard 809s that actually worked? They are very colored,
but they are very forward sounding. I can't stand them for monitoring
but they are great for playback for the customer.

2. If your 809s have damaged cones, they will sound bad, and whether or not
you like the 809 sound, you will not be happy. You can get replacement
cones for these; Steve at Cardinal Sound and Motion Picture in Baltimore
can rebuild these, I think. Then they will sound like they are supposed to.
But you need to know if you like the way they are supposed to sound before
you invest the money there.

3. If you don't like the way they are supposed to sound, reconing them is a
bad plan. However, the Radian drivers that I used to like to retrofit in
these aren't being made any more, nor are the Gauss drivers that some folks
have used. I don't honestly know of any coaxials with an Fs as low as the
original drivers now. But, you might be able to get some existing coaxials
like the B&Cs rebuilt with modified spiders. It would definitely be a
project and not a drop-in job, and probably expensive to do the amount of
cut-and-try engineering to voice them well.

4. Don't forget new diaphragms and new crossover caps while they are open.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."