Speaker Help...Sort or Skip

[WESTLOWER]

I was given these speakers by a friend of a friend.
The were aparentley custom built in the 60's, for a classical musician.
They are amazingly heavy ..at least 75 kg each!
Well braced and pretty well built, bit tatty though.
I had to take the old front cloth off and ditch, they do not have removable Panels on the front.

Anyway they have 2 Bass drivers (only visible when I took the front cloth off, as they have a divided panel
that runs from the bottom to near the top inside and the drivers are fixed to the front baffle)
I think these are KEF B139 Woffers but I'm not sure as i can't get access to the back of them. They seem in tact and not perished.

They have a Compressed Horn Mid and a tweeter that fires upwards..
The Crossover box is a big wood box in each Cab, Goodmans x0.950

I connected them (to a 300b PP Amp) up and all works fine but the bass is lacking and the tops are shrilly!

Thoughts?
Is it worth chucking dosh at this project or skip?
I feel obliged to get them singing..

pictures are on the link below as I am unsure how to embed them on AoS site.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/151702904@N08/508e22

[Edward]

Have a chat with Paul Baldwin at reelaudio. He use to work at Goodmans in Wembley probably around the time those speakers were made. Maybe he has something info that is helpfull.

Send my regards if you chat with him.

Sent via Tapatalk

[walpurgis]

The crossover being a 15 ohm design will not work properly with the 8 ohm KEF B139 bass drivers unless they are in series. Then you'd have very low bass efficiency, which is maybe why the speakers sound shrill. You could try a 15/16 ohm attenuator ('L' Pad) with the mids to reduce output and restore some kind of balance and try the same with the tweeter (which looks like a Celestion HF1300). A better alternative might be to find a pair of sensitive 15/16 ohm bass drivers to bung in instead of the KEFs.

I doubt they're going to sound great whatever you do. I don't like the Midax mid horn. It's pretty coloured and a bit brash.

If you give up, the drive units will sell OK.

[WESTLOWER]

Cheers Edward

Have a chat with Paul Baldwin at reelaudio. He use to work at Goodmans in Wembley probably around the time those speakers were made. Maybe he has something info that is helpfull.

Send my regards if you chat with him.

Sent via Tapatalk

[WESTLOWER]

Thanks Geoff..

[pgarrish]

Try Keith mf1000 on the wam (maybe here or PF too?), he's built some speakers based on those drivers. I'd love to say they sound pants to wind him up but they don't....

[agk]

Stripping them for parts is definitely a solution. As said already the drivers will sell easily and are simpler to package and post than complete cabs.
That said I'd want to hear them with a bit of power through them before binning them.

[Scooby]

I just couldn't break up a pair of speakers or any bit of kit for spares. Just feels utterly wrong to me.

[agk]

If parts from two faulty speakers can be combined to make one good speaker it only makes good sense.

[walpurgis]

Unfortunately, the B139 bass units have a limited range of applications, they are best suited to use below 500 Hz. The Midax mids are not great for Hi-Fi, they have obvious colourations and are a bit coarse, their sensitivity is too high to work with the KEF's. They'd be fine for DJ use though. The HF1300 tweeters can sound very good in the right context.