A Successful New Speaker Experiment

UPDATE: These have been completely sanded and oiled and look stunning!
The Mission 710s with upgraded woofers from a pair of 770 Freedoms sounded good, but their incredible lack of efficiency has been a concern for me. I mean really inefficient: a satisfying volume is achieved in my place with most speakers at around none or ten o'clock. The 710s produce the same volume at one! While the midrange balance and the good results with sax and vocals told me that the new woofers were compatible with the crossovers, I began to think that this woofer would be better in a ported enclosure, like where it came from and was designed for (the 710s are a rare sealed Mission design).

I mentioned a trade about a month ago, and that one of the pairs had arrived DOA. I was wrong, the drivers had been removed for testing and not reconnected. The speakers are from Paisley Research, a canadian manufacturer that I hope to be able to tell you more about. The model is not indicated. They are very large ported eight inch two way systems utilizing french Polydax drivers, as do the canadian Rega speakers I have loved. The woofers have rubber surrounds and one is perfect, one was torn in many places and needs replacement. The cone diameter is unusual, and a standard eight inch foam was not wide enough. I tried modifying a ten inch surround and couldn't make it work without distorting, no matter how I cut it.

Being anxious to hear what the Paisleys could do, I installed the Mission woofers and WOW! The sound is gorgeous. The Polydax tweeter may be an even better one than in the Regas, and the woofer is right in it's element. The efficiency of this system is now normal, and the dynamic range is now excellent, with lots of headroom.

The Paisley cabinets are big and beautiful, real wood veneer with rounded corners. They will take a while to finish...the speaker pegs have been difficult to remove so that I can sand the fronts properly, and the rounded edges take more time than regular corners, but now I know the effort will pay off. These are fantastic!

I will retire the Mission 710s until I find the right (softer, more efficient) drivers for them, with the knowledge that Mission put the right drivers in the right systems in the first place! e-mail me