Friday, April 9, 2010

Surprising Speakers

A good friend of this blog found this pair of Patterson Industries Phase 4 speakers on the curb waiting for garbage collection. Neither of us had heard of the brand (though I'm sure I've seen the logo before!), and had no idea what might be inside. One sounded promising, the other sounded awful. After battling to move the spiked in place grills, we discovered surprising drivers. The woofer is labeled HECO, which I know is german. It has a relatively small magnet, but has the same distinctive asterisk shaped contact solders on the cone as Braun. The tweeter also looks very similar to Braun, distinguished by the exposed leads on either side of the dome.

I refoamed both 8 inch woofers, stripped and sanded the cabinets, and redid the grill cloths.

These speakers deserve the attention! They sound beautiful, with a beautiful top, stunning midrange and detailed, but not very extended bass response. They remind me of a nice pair of ADS speakers. This is a pair I wish I could keep!



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1 comment:

Unknown said...

My brother in law had a pair of these in the seventies.l always liked the sound and solid build of these speakers. They sounded way better than the big department store speakers of the time.