Vandersteen 1 rebuild
Designer: speaker whisperer
Project Category
Tower Speakers
Project Level
Intermediate
Project Time
1-8 Hours
Project Cost
$100 – $500
Project Description
To be able to refurbish a couple of blown woofers on a vandersteen 1 and improve the tweeters too!
Design Goals
To keep the original look of the vandersteen 1s and improve its clarity by replacing the driver with similar sound!
Driver Selection
Heres the problem you cannot use just any woofer cause its 8 1/2 in diameter, so I used the Dayton Audio ds215-8 designer woofer with a flat frequency response… decide on the tymphany xt25bg60-04, a dual ring radiator with a magical center nipple to cut the distortions to a mininmum!
Enclosure Design
Same as original cabinet,
Enclosure Assembly
To get at the speaker without tearing up the sock, you have to remove the top wooden plate by prying gently around and you’ll see that speaker putty was used to secure the two, now theirs a million staples to hold the sock in place, remove all gently and pull the sock down kinda of inside out and let hang loosely.. you should be able to get at the drivers now! clean all the putty up surrounding the speaker
Crossover Design
This tweeter I recommend is a 4 ohm shielded and needs a 12 watt 2 ohm wire wound resistor for each positive side to match the original crossover set-up.. mills non- inductive
Parts Used
2ea 295-430 Dayton Audio 8 inch ; 2ea 269-165 tymphany tweeters 2ea mill 12watt 2ohm resistor
Conclusion
Wow! I have a great if not better sounding set of audiophile speakers again on these Vandersteen 1s!!!
About the Designer
Work with dimension 4 a number of years, studied at greene joint vocational in industrial electronics ’84, devry tech ’87.. into classic audio amps, rebuilding and design, just started investigating tube audio too!!!
Incredible rebuild , I also love refurbishing speaker systems
I would go through the bottom side of the speaker first as shown on the You tube Ray video
I’m looking to rebuild a set of Model 4’s, curious what is recommended.
Is there a way to communicate with the person that did this restoration? I have a pair of model 1 with woofers missing. I can get a matched pair of original woofers from Vandersteen and just wondering what modifications to to crossover. Seems hard to believe that these woofers will match better than originals from Vandersteen. They say that the originals are acoustically coupled to the speaker cabinet?? How will would this effect using the mentioned drivers as replacements?
Chris: no ‘definitive’ answer can be given to your specifics; but I can give you a simplistic analogy which might explain some acoustic concerns that relate to your dilemma.
Think of a speaker cone, and it’s suspension, and magnetic coupling design… similar to a ‘huge’ bell. The bell has a ‘mid’ frequency that it really is ‘known’ for… for that bell, but also has ‘warm tones’ going in most directions from it’s central frequency. Same with the speaker cone; so there is quite possibly a ‘frequency that needs ‘suppressing,’ and frequencies that need marked enhancement. The electronic cross-over tries to ‘dampen’ at the frequency the ‘bell’ likes to put out with ease, while the ‘coupling’ to the cabinet (the air space behing the cone as a rule), is generally ‘tuned’ to couple to emphasize the speaker’s lower, and less resonant frequencies. Can you ‘put’ another speaker in its place, and expect a ‘good’ result? Very very doubtful, – crapshoot actually. But is it ‘possible’? Sure. Once you get started down this path with a mavric speaker, and it really doesn’t work (sound is NOT flat in it’s response), can you then chase down ‘help’ from anyone? No, even if they want to. If you work with Vandersteen,even their solution too… could run into acoustic snags… but in that case…. you’ll get VERY expert help.