Pioneer CS-88 vintage speakers, bad crossovers? (1 Viewer)

[Seth=L]

I posted on another thread about these and Lance had some suggestions for me, I did what he told me and found nothing new. He suggested that I test each driver individually and I did, found no driver problems. I kept them apart to look at the x-over and I may have found something. I wish I had a digital camera to show you guys, but sadly I don't so I will explain it as best as possible.

The x-over network includes 2 attenuation devices for high frequencies and mid frequencies. There are also 5 capacitors, all different sizes, The largest one has a 50 printed on it and the smallest one has a 2.4 on it. The caps are metalic with both ends having a single soldered wire coming out of the black plastic end.
What troubles me is the smallest one has only one end that is plastic while the other end is open with no wire attached. There is another wire that is open ended. My question is should that open ended wire be connected to the capacitor and if so how should it be connected? I know little to nothing when it comes to cross-overs.

When I purchased these speakers they sounded good, but when they were played for only a few minutes my receiver shut down from an overload. It would seem there is a short somewhere or something. I cannot imagine another reason why my transistors would get so hot so quickly.

I am open to any and all info on these speakers even if it does not pertain to the current problem of these speakers i.e. specs if they even exist.

Seth=L

 

[Seth=L]

I JUST BROKE THE WOOFER!!! When I was attemting to remove the the wires connected to the woofer I broke the negative connection to the paper of the woofer. I really HATE those clamps, no reason on GOD'S GREEN EARTH they should be so difficult to remove. I spent 10 minutes trying to remove that one lead carefully and screwed it up. If only it wasn't so ridiculously hard to get those darn leads off!

PS. My vein is popping out of my neck, I could scream.

Seth=L

 

[Seth=L]

Can the woofer be repaired?

Seth=L

 

[John Garcia]

Are they allowing gear list in sig now?

You can try soldering it. I've done it before. If that doesn't work, just solder a piece of wire on there and use whatever connection type you like. The bad thing about older stuff is, it tends to break.

 

[LanceJ]

This sounds like a physically broken capacitor.

Also, do both CS88s cause the receiver to shut down, or just one? Trying one at a time could narrow down the problem.

Seth: do you mean the wire from the woofer cone to the piece of plastic (or metal) that holds the other end & where the wire from the crossover connects via the push-on connector is broken?

Or just the male push-on connector (that receives the female connector on the wire from the xover) broke off?

Either way, like John said you should be able to solder it back on, but if its the first scenario make sure to not burn up the cone!

Don't give up yet on these - so many older speakers like these still sound great (though because of their kind of haphazard driver placement, imaging is not always as good as newer designs*).

You might want to try these sites for additonal help - both have lots of nice people who like to help with situations like this:

Pioneer discussions at Audiokarma.org

Vintage Asylum

Classicspeakerpages.net (though site seems to be down right now)


* by the late 70s precise/stable stereo imaging was higher on the priority list, even at the "mid-fi" companies: this is a model I've been keeping my eye open for (ever since I was a kid actually - it just looked so cool!): Technics SB-6060 from '79. Plus, all the driver's voice coils were lined up in the vertical plane which also helped the imaging. B&W and KEF used similar concepts (which I'm sure Technics used as inspiration )..

 

[Alex/d]

Hmm.. well good job Seth. I was going to fix it for you, but you broke it..oh well.. I guess you could always slap in a Celestion j/k

 

[Seth=L]

The permanant wire that connects the termination of the woofer to the paper cone is broken at the cone.

 

[Seth=L]

The capacitor seems to be broken the same way in each speaker.

Seth=L

 

[John Garcia]

Hmmm... repairing it at the cone is a bit more tricky, I was hoping it was on the terminal side. If you're good with a soldering iron, you can try tinning the end of the wire well (get a little ball at the end), and then just use a little bit of heat on it while it is still warm and touch it to where it attaches to the cone, then cover it up with some RTV to add some strain relief, if it stays. It's hit or miss on this; I've had some work that way and some not.

If you can get the values off the caps, they should be relatively easy to replace (again, if you can solder). Is it loose or on a board?

 

[Seth=L]

Loose, it is a very old design and the capacitors only have one thing printed on them and that's "2.4" there is nothing else.

I have never used a soldering gun so I probably need to find someone that can do it for me.

Seth=L