Piezo speakers???

[Tinman]

I'm just starting with a refurb on a Vela DK-7000.
I've started with the speakers and literally reflowed every solder joint which took a while but all of the leds are working.
I've colored the woofers white and am trying to figure out what to do with the tweeters.
These come with piezos (which were dead) and wanted to do away with them but there really isn't any room for even the smallest tweeter that I've found.
They're actually situated under one of the led boards.
I thought about drilling a 1/2" hole to the top right and left outside of the woofer and mounting a 5/8" soft dome tweeter behind it but even that would be extremely tight and I'm not sure how great it would sound.
I'm thinking that if I can find good quality piezo discs, I'll just use those.
By good quality I mean ones that the leads won't fall off by just looking at them.
Does anyone know of a source here in the states that has "good" quality piezo discs that would sound at least decent?

 

[Reli]

Parts Express maybe?

 

[Radio raheem]

as far as i am aware peizo do next to nothing even when working lad

 

[Superduper]

Piezo's can get quite loud with very little power input. Just think how loud and annoying those little singing greeting cards can get. However, they don't work very long and I suspect all factory piezos are toast by now.

Will these work? I fit them into my JVC kaboom project and also stuffed them into the Panasonic RX-5150 which also had non-functioning piezos. Both projects turned out well, or at least noticeable improvement compared to without.

I have a bunch of these, they are intended for automotive applications, 6 ohms. Can mount with a single screw on the back, or on my RX-5150, I just hot glued it to the boombox cabinet.

 

[Tinman]

I'll include some pics so you can see how little room there is in this speaker box.
The led strips are killing me.
First off, here you can see the small rectangular opening where the piezo was.

Here you can see where it sat under the led board with very little room.

Here's where I was thinking I could drill a hole and mount a speaker but there really isn't a whole lot of room.
I was thinking of cutting the end piece of the circuit board off which would give me another 1/4" or so.

Here's where a surface mount could go but there's maybe 3/8" depth between the plastic and grille and about an inch or so for the diameter.

 

[caution]

I agree, cut away the part of the PCB in your way and jumper the wires, then you can mount a much better sounding tweeter

 

[Reli]

Wow, why did they even bother putting a tweeter there where most people wouldn't see it. The whole point of adding an extra speaker is to look cool and impress people. After all, the more speakers, the better, right? No, a high-quality full-range speaker can easily sound better than a low-quality 2-way setup. The JVC PC-5 is an example.

 

[Tinman]

I agree, cut away the part of the PCB in your way and jumper the wires, then you can mount a much better sounding tweeter

That part is the end of the circuit.
It starts where the wires are and runs clockwise around so I should be able to cut those three or four traces off with no problems.
I'll have to see what i can find to fit in there if I do it.
Agree a full range would've been the way to go here.
The main radio isn't currently in the best shape meaning the 5 band eq and volume sliders are pretty rough and are hit and miss trying to get them to work so these woofers might not be as bad as they seem to be right now.
I'll look into this more tomorrow.

 

[Superduper]

Looks like theres very little room and a conventional tweeter is going to require some kind of hole to disperse the sound, otherwise it will be completely shrouded. Those tiny disc piezos are quite loud (when working) so maybe that tiny slit is the way they throttled the sound. Before you do any led cutting, I'd verify space beforehand to ensure you don't hack everything up only to discover nothing fits anyways.

This might be a situation where you might want to use coaxial speakers or cut a support plate like I did on the kabooms to act as a bridge to float those delco tweeters in front of the factory speakers. On mine, they were centered but if your speakers have a lighted center cone, then you may want to offset the tweeters to the edge. Just a thought.

Or buy couple of singing greeting cards, rip out those discs and try that route.

 

[Tinman]

I'm thinking about buying some 5/8" soft dome tweeters since I've used them before with success.
They're 32.5mm or 1.3" in diameter.
If anyone knows of smaller diameter ones, I'd appreciate you letting me know.
I definitely won't cut anything until I have the speakers in hand.
Thanks.

 

[Daeljan]

I'm thinking about buying some 5/8" soft dome tweeters since I've used them before with success.
They're 32.5mm or 1.3" in diameter.
If anyone knows of smaller diameter ones, I'd appreciate you letting me know.
I definitely won't cut anything until I have the speakers in hand.
Thanks.

Hi,

I'm after some also for a GF-9090 - I'd appreciate any insight you may have gained.
I'm currently deciding if I can mod the box to fit these somehow, but not much space to work with!

https://amzn.eu/d/3Lrk5Ek

 

[Tinman]

Hi,

I'm after some also for a GF-9090 - I'd appreciate any insight you may have gained.
I'm currently deciding if I can mod the box to fit these somehow, but not much space to work with!

https://amzn.eu/d/3Lrk5Ek

Still working on this.
I ordered the smaller 5/8" version of those.
As I wrote above, they're 32.5mm outside diameter, the 3/4" you linked to look to be 39mm.
Now I'm thinking about trying exciters in place of actual tweeters which I've just found out about.
If I can mount them to the tops of the cabinet no modifications would be necessary.
The only problem is, I'm not sure if they'll produce the high frequency with the plastic enclosures to replace a tweeter.
I'm waiting to hear back from Dayton.

 

[Daeljan]

Still working on this.
I ordered the smaller 5/8" version of those.
As I wrote above, they're 32.5mm outside diameter, the 3/4" you linked to look to be 39mm.
Now I'm thinking about trying exciters in place of actual tweeters which I've just found out about.
If I can mount them to the tops of the cabinet no modifications would be necessary.
The only problem is, I'm not sure if they'll produce the high frequency with the plastic enclosures to replace a tweeter.
I'm waiting to hear back from Dayton.

Thanks Tinman!

Are you adding a bluetooth interface at all?
I'm told that the best place to insert is the Tape / Radio selector, but that's the mother of all switches - I've been scratching my head this evening looking at the layout...

 

[Tinman]

Thanks Tinman!

Are you adding a bluetooth interface at all?
I'm told that the best place to insert is the Tape / Radio selector, but that's the mother of all switches - I've been scratching my head this evening looking at the layout...

I haven't decided on Bluetooth yet.
I'll decide once I get into the main unit and see what it's like.

 

[Daeljan]

Still working on this.
I ordered the smaller 5/8" version of those.
As I wrote above, they're 32.5mm outside diameter, the 3/4" you linked to look to be 39mm.
Now I'm thinking about trying exciters in place of actual tweeters which I've just found out about.
If I can mount them to the tops of the cabinet no modifications would be necessary.
The only problem is, I'm not sure if they'll produce the high frequency with the plastic enclosures to replace a tweeter.
I'm waiting to hear back from Dayton.

These look like a decent fit in terms of form factor. They look a little thin though:

JINGERL 1 Inch 25mm Tweeter Speaker Units 4 Ohm 15W Neodymium Dome Silk Treble Loudspeaker High Pitch Horn for Harman Kardon 2PCS : Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

JINGERL 1 Inch 25mm Tweeter Speaker Units 4 Ohm 15W Neodymium Dome Silk Treble Loudspeaker High Pitch Horn for Harman Kardon 2PCS : Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

www.amazon.co.uk

 

[Tinman]

These look like a decent fit in terms of form factor. They look a little thin though:

JINGERL 1 Inch 25mm Tweeter Speaker Units 4 Ohm 15W Neodymium Dome Silk Treble Loudspeaker High Pitch Horn for Harman Kardon 2PCS : Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

JINGERL 1 Inch 25mm Tweeter Speaker Units 4 Ohm 15W Neodymium Dome Silk Treble Loudspeaker High Pitch Horn for Harman Kardon 2PCS : Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

www.amazon.co.uk

I'm not a speaker aficionado but I've never heard of that brand.
I'd bet most of the cheaper speakers are made in China by just a few different companies.

I have to verify the ohms on my woofers and I'm going to order a pair of exciters and try those out in place of regular tweeters.
At the very least, I'll have some fun trying them out on different surfaces.

 

[floyd]

I'm not a speaker aficionado but I've never heard of that brand.
I'd bet most of the cheaper speakers are made in China by just a few different companies.

I have to verify the ohms on my woofers and I'm going to order a pair of exciters and try those out in place of regular tweeters.
At the very least, I'll have some fun trying them out on different surfaces.

These audio exciters basically use any hard surface as a radiator for the vibrations they produce sometimes it turns into a tonal sound depends on how you place it and where but they basically take a tiny little speaker and use the surfaces mounted to as a radiator to make the sound larger. There are many different designs and applications so keep that in mind.

 

[Tinman]

These audio exciters basically use any hard surface as a radiator for the vibrations they produce sometimes it turns into a tonal sound depends on how you place it and where but they basically take a tiny little speaker and use the surfaces mounted to as a radiator to make the sound larger. There are many different designs and applications so keep that in mind.

Yeah, from what I've read and been told, it seems that for higher frequency, a smaller exciter works best.
I'm thinking a 13 or 19mm.
I believe the thin plastic of the speaker enclosure should work well also as long as I make sure nothing vibrates in it.

 

[Superduper]

I thought you were wanting replacements for the original piezo tweeters, I just can’t see how an exciter will make a good or even suitable replacement for one. Exciters don’t even have spl or frequency response specs because it all depends upon the surface. Also are you gonna filter the signal through a capacitor? Because if you don’t, the exciter and speaker run in parallel will halve the impedance and be really amp hungry. I don’t see how the exciter with an imperfect surface can sound better or louder (high hz) than an actual cone speaker yet they are gonna compete for amp power.

 

[Tinman]

I thought you were wanting replacements for the original piezo tweeters, I just can’t see how an exciter will make a good or even suitable replacement for one. Exciters don’t even have spl or frequency response specs because it all depends upon the surface. Also are you gonna filter the signal through a capacitor? Because if you don’t, the exciter and speaker run in parallel will halve the impedance and be really amp hungry. I don’t see how the exciter with an imperfect surface can sound better or louder (high hz) than an actual cone speaker yet they are gonna compete for amp power.

After I get the 5/8" speakers I'll decide whether or not I can fit them in but I don't really think there's a good place/enough room for them.
I want to buy a pair of the exciters anyway because I've never seen or used them before and really want to try them out.
I'd definitely use a capacitor, maybe a 4.7 or 3.3.
The plastic on the inside of the speaker is smooth and fairly thin so I'll see how it works with them.
Nothing is written in stone right now, once I get the speakers and exciters, I'll see which works best.