Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Mission Update

  I've started refinishing the cabinets, and most of the scratches are gone (they all will be). Because there are no graphics on the charcoal hammer tone front baffle (as on the 737 and 770 Freedom 4), and because there are chips of hammer tone missing, I'm going to completely repaint the baffles and stands (which I got with the recent 737s, but were used on 3 models). They're going to be beautiful.    I just left the tweeters at The Speaker Shop to have new surrounds made and installed, and as usual learned a lot about them and speakers in general. I now know that I'm lucky to have heard sound from them at all in their present state, and that I haven't heard anything close to their potential. I also know that even if I've developed some skill after refoaming more than 150 pairs of woofers and mids, I don't want to discover that I don't have enough on these babies! I'll tell you more soon.

   More: The drivers are all french, made by Sierre, a high end OEM manufacturer bought by Audax, absorbed and bankrupted (to circumvent french labour laws which would have required 2 years severance for terminated employees), which was then bought by Harman International, absorbed and bankrupted (same reason). The tweeters are massive and heavy. Their cones are fibreglass. The woofers appear similar to the the scandinavian ones Mission usually used (Seas or Vifa), but with far more elaborate casting, and 8 moulded ribs on each mineral loaded polypropylene cone.

1 comment:

Claude said...

Hello,
The Tweeter was made by SIARE, model TWZV.
The first version of this tweeter, TWZ, had a paper cone (sound better IMHO).
I had a pair of speakers with the TWZ when I was a teen.