Sep 23rd, 2014
Q) I found a strange old pair of speakers at the dump one day about a year ago. Brought them home, dusted them off, spent about a month killing mildew... They are Walsh 2 speakers, with a Huge crossover in the depths of the cabinet, and a removable "Capsule" containing the drivers. They sounded pretty darn good at first but now the tweeters, buried deep inside the capsule, are beginning to sound fuzzy and the mids need to be re-edged. i think I can do the latter. I don't know that I can cope with the tweeters, though. Ohm is still around. they charge about $900 to fix these. That might be a decent deal. I have no idea -- do You? Ever worked with these? Given that I'm in Freeport Maine, You are in "Wattatown," and Ohm is in NYC, even the Shipping might be prohibitive... whereas I could drive these down to you. Is this something you'd tkae a look at? Thanks,
A) Don't be mislead, these speakers are not what they appear to be. Behind the module mesh metal bucket is in fact an ordinary but decent woofer, and an ordinary but decent dome tweeter. Sometimes there was instead a paper tweeter in there. The Woofer is mounted upside down in the cabinet the tweeter is mounted on top of the woofer pointing out over the Ohm Logo. Interesting pyramid styling cabinet. This was the Ohm Walsh 2 as I recall. The Ohm Walsh 1 is the big, big one woofer transducer line driver. Both speakers represent somewhat of a marketing gimmick, although an upside down woofer can have more spatial dispersion, but at the cost of mechanical noise and slightly mismatched level between woofer to tweeter. The design could have been done better and certainly the cabinets are of good quality. We have rebuilt them, but basically thrown out all the original parts once failed. Better parts can be accommodated for a few hundred dollars. Don't pay that $900 to fix them. They're just regular speakers with a hidden assembly to confuse the consumer!! Actually I sold a mint condition set of these to my neighbor for $250 (the woofers had textile surround and so were more reliable) When working correctly they certainly are OK, but in no way do they represent any serious technical breakthrough, and again certainly not worth the $900 to replace common parts. Customers want them mostly because of cabinet design and room placement style. The parts quality is somewhat dated although the peerless dome tweeter typically used in them has a reasonable sound. We can upgrade them or make them similar as the original, or create an audiophile version, all for about the same money (approx. $300). I don't spent the time usually to pull apart the cage, but some people will spend extra to have me built into the cage again (it may limit the size of part to be used). In any case there are lots of vintage speakers around that give a similar sound character. Older AR, KLH, Polk, Advent, Dalquist, were all using similar type parts. The Ohms were floor standing which brought the woofer tweeter up higher off the floor for easier and better dispersion. So in some ways there was a benefit. If the cabinets are rotting out or peeling why bother to repair. Excellent condition vintage speakers with similar sound character can be had from us for $200 - $400. We specialize in rebuilding better older speakers as it is still cost effective and many people prefer a softer and slightly thicker sound which was in vogue at the time. They can sound slightly "tube like" on modern CD etc. As for a consumer to be able to correctly re-edge the speakers, that is troublesome. I send all drivers out to a specialist who correctly centers and aligns the voicecoil, skyver and spider. It requires some special shims, glue, and talent to really do it right, although some people will impress themselves with "I fixed it" seldom do they get woofer truly correctly aligned. People have shipped them in or if you are local repairs it can be done within a few weeks depending upon which version "2" you have. (various versions were made with different parts!!) Contact us directly by phone if you need our services or equipment.
Thanks
Vince.
P.S. Some later version speakers indeed had a very special long throw, huge magnet structure woofer which still are usable. As I recall C.2 and similar. This was a superior speaker. After basic modifications are done to take it into the modern era, (upgrade dome tweeter, and more phase correct crossover design is done) We have models of these available presently in our showroom. Ohm built some very solid cabinets and certain paid attention to using decent parts reasonably well, but they were notorious for making cheapy stuff for early tech Hi Fi chain marketing stores FYI.