Two Fane 5137 5" Tweeters. Both O/C?

[OldTechFan96]

One the 'roundtuit' pile I have a nice Hacker Serenade that uses two 5" Fane 5137 tweeters alongside a large Goodmans unit. Apparently the tweeters were specially made for Hacker by Fane.

Unfortunately they both measure O/C on my DMM. Not even a slight click with a battery!

The Goodmans speaker works fine.

I can understand one falling open over a nearly 60 year period, but both together?

I wonder what caused this?

The gentleman I bought this off was apparently using the Serenade until recently. Broken connections to the mono/stereo switch must have stopped things working and as a result, it was sold.

I'll post some photos tomorrow.

[Craig Sawyers]

Fane is now owned by the same family that founded the company.

Could be worth contacting them https://www.fane-international.com/index.aspx

Craig

[retailer]

The obvious way to repair is to fit new diaphragms but if these are not available then there may be another way. A while back I 'repaired' the Trebax style tweeters in a pair of Goodmans 12" Triaxioms, I use the word repaired loosely here as I wouldn't really call it a proper repair and it isn't something one would do for a paying customer, but it did work. The Trebax voice coils are wound with aluminium wire (as are many tweeters), over time the flux used to solder the wire corrodes the connection at the terminal, I disassembled them and found a corroded break right next to the terminal, I tried without success to bridge the short gap with copper wire, I didn't have the right flux to make solder take to the aluminium, so I bridged the gap with 'liquid' wire the type used to repair a broken car rear window demister, comes in a very small bottle, is copper coloured and I believe consists of a copper/silver powder suspended in a carrier, just paint it on, let it dry and reassemble.
This lasted just over 3 yrs until the adhesive on the main driver voice coil let go and the voice coil wire simply fell of the voice coil former, I rewound the voice coil, but needed to partly disassemble the tweeter to get the speaker cone out and in doing so I disturbed the liquid wire connection, at this time a decision was made to replace both tweeters with aftermarket units.
If your tweeters are not operational and replacement diaphragms not available then it is worth a shot you've nothing to lose except the cost of the liquid wire.

[Nickthedentist]

I wonder whether their coupling cap is leaky, and that fried them?

Either way, I don't think you need to be too picky here. These are lovely-sounding record players but not really in the true hifi league. So I think some smaller cone tweeters taken from defunct midi system / music centre speakers would probably work almost as well.

[OldTechFan96]

Thanks for the replies gentleman.

I think that the next best step would be to replace the tweeters. The original pair are 16Ω each. I doubt tweeters of the needed size and impedance are easy to get a hold of these days.

I wonder if I could get away with using a suitably sized full range driver? It would take care of the high frequencies. My concern would be the lower impedance upsetting things.

I bought a pair of these last year to replace similar units in a HMV stereo. It was almost a drop in replacement. The mounting holes needed a slight bit of filing to get things to fit.

I would like to investigate the break in the voice coil; I think I'll leave them alone.

Eventually I will check if leakage was the cause of this.

[Edward Huggins]

Yes, I would agree with the above. I'm sure Hacker knew what they were doing, but a 5" diameter "tweeter" will present a lot of cone mass. I'm sure an Audax clone domed unit or a 3" paper cone type will work well. Use a 2.2uf non-polarised (e.g. Alcap) as the filter.

[Nickthedentist]

The Cavalier and Gondolier used the same (or a very similar) speaker with no tweeters. These sound rather mellow.

I don't think I'd use a full-range driver. I'd do what Edward suggests, making simple adaptor plates out of some 1/4" ply or MDF with a jigsaw. Reversible if ever the proper units ever crop up.

[OldTechFan96]

New tweeters with a suitable adapter looks like the way to go.

What would members recommend?

These don't look too bad for £9.99 a go.

[Edward Huggins]

Yes, these would be ideal and are what I meant by "Audax Clones". I can't see from their specs what their impedance is? They are most liable to be 8ohms so they will not exactly match the orginals, but the difference may not be noticeable. You will definitely hear the difference!

[simpsons]

Looking at the inside of the Hacker, you will see NOT tweeters as generally seen but Fane "radio" speakers.

A guy on eBay is selling the very same. Yours for £12 plus p&p

Search: FANE Alnico tweeter Speakers.

I have no connection with the seller and do double check the size and as advised, the coupling capacitor.

Chris

[OldTechFan96]

Thanks for the advice gentleman.

I'll look into the Fane speakers on eBay. They are described as being 3Ω vs the 15Ω of the originals.

The Audax type tweeter is 8Ω.

If I connected the two 8Ω tweeters and the 15Ω Goodmans together as per the connecting diagram, what would the total impedance be?

I have a Marconi output meter that can be set up for every impedance know to man which I can use for testing. Hopefully the lower impedance of the tweeters does not change anything.

I forgot to upload some photos of the O/C tweeters.

[Edward Huggins]

Those orignal Face 5" drivers are interesting. They look to have a curved, stiff cone and I can see that they might act as a kind of mid-range-cum-tweeter at the right cross-over frequency. They look like "specials" and I suspect are not a bog-standard "radio speaker".

[simpsons]

Looking at the Hacker schematic, the 2 tweeters are in parallel and so present 7.5 ohms to the 1uF. All things being equal, 2 off 3ohm speakers in series would present 6 ohms to the 1uF. There are tables on the web on how this might affect the frequency the tweeters kick in.

Now originality it would seem is not possible and I note the above comment, but having an open cone tweeter does illustrate some give and take by Hacker on the norm and possibly to get some more mid range to open up the sound stage.

Should you have a 5" or so transistor radio speaker try it out to see if the extra treble is sufficient. Use the hiss from the FM tuner when off station to judge.

We are talking how the unit sounds to you. Matching tweeter frequency response to the bass speaker with the correct crossover design turnover is dependant on knowing the speakers individual frequency responses, cabinet resonance with the case open or closed and so on.


Good luck

Chris

[OldTechFan96]

The tweeter transplant was a success!

To make a tweeter adaptor plate I traced the original tweeter (including screw holes) onto a piece of 1/8" board and cut it using a jigsaw.

Once the plates were cut, I drilled a 1 1/4" hole in the middle of each plate to let the silk dome of the tweeter poke through.

Finally, I drilled some mounting holes for tweeter and attached the two using nuts and bolts.

Once this was done, each tweeter could be fitted in place using the original hardware.

I think that the plates turned out quite well. They represent the best that I could do with the tools I have.

The performance is impressive! The tweeters really start to kick in once the treble knob is advanced past the 12:00 position. Sounds much better than the Gondolier that I once had; it would have benefited from using one.

Thanks to all the members who helped!

[Nickthedentist]

Well done, that looks great.