I was hoping to go to Active Surplus to by speaker foam for a stunning new small speaker I've got, but that's not going to happen today in Toronto. Many of my favourite grungy used equipment dealers shops are in the vicinity of some of todays planned anarchy. I wish them the best.
These are fantastic little speakers. They are missing the mesh covers over the tweeters and have no grills, but I think they look really cool with their 8 inch white woofers. I just finished stripping, sanding and oiling them. The walnut veneer is beautiful. Will I find a vintage JBL that I don't like?
They are 8 inch (white woofer) 2 way systems with titanium dome tweeters. Though they are listed in the 1982 catalogue, they have the soul and construction quality of the companys best seventies output. This pair is without grills, and the cabinets need a lot of attention. Playing as I write this, driven by my Marantz 2270, I couldn't be happier.
This is going to be a great project. The 720 is unusual for vintage Mission in that it's a three way system with a ten inch woofer. Here is the owners manual. The tweeter is an all time favourite, the same Seas that's in the 770 and currently in my KEF 104s. The midrange drivers need refoaming. They are built into their own sealed back enclosures. One of the woofers has a voice coil connection problem that I hope Vladimirs delicate hands can fix (I'm not that good with a soldering iron yet). The cabinets are finished in a beautiful teak veneer. I was able to strip 2 sides of each cabinet before I lost light and ran out of stripper last night, and they are going to look fantastic. I hope to hear these tomorrow!
I thought that when I'd read about resealing the woofers in these classic speakers, what was meant was making sure that the original putty was still flexible, and if not using silicone caulking or something similar to make sure there were no leaks in the seal. From this excellent Audiokarma post, I learned that the cloth surrounds become porous, compromising the acoustic suspension system. I resealed the surrounds as instructed, replaced the crossover capacitors, and sat down to listen. These sound much better than the last pair, which I had a couple of years ago. They are musical and authoritative, with beautiful bass response and a real sparkle.The sealing must make the difference in the bass.
This pair of speakers has been a long term project. When I got them, they were a mess. The tweeters were both blown, one woofer was making horrible noises, the cabinets were a mess, with many scratches, and a capacitor in one of the crossovers was smashed, fragments at the bottom of the cabinet. I consulted some smarter (than me) speaker experts and installed a pair of Seas tweeters from an original pair of Mission 770s. I replaced the broken capacitor and one woofer.
I just got this. It's a modern, inexpensive, asian made (but I don't know what country) high end hybrid integrated amp, rated at 25 watts/channel. It's been driving the KEF 104s strongly for about half an hour now, and is sounding really nice.
It may seem anticlimactic to be writing about such a modest speaker after a long break (no new Missions or JBLs!), but these are sweet little speakers from Radio Shack's great years. Made in Japan, heavy for their size, beautifully constructed and great walnut veneer cabinets. They sound really nice, comparable to my AR 4XAs, but with greater clarity (perhaps the ARs need new caps).
