Jump to content

Information on Microstat Tweeter Array


Recommended Posts

Vern, I took that frontal pic just after removing the grille and didn't notice the absence of 2 screws on the larger tweeter until I started working on recapping it.

It turns out those two screws were quite short and loose. I replace all with 4 longer ones.

Hi Carl;

Isn't it amazing that the screws would be too short and loose too.

Were the two screws the only one's in that one speaker behind the cloth?

I guess the vibrations from the Microstat subwoofer section loosened the screws. LOL

This would appear to be on the surface to be poor manufacturing quality control.

This of course is in the hands of an assembly person, and of course engineering and quality control.

Now would each of these tiny array's been individually tested prior to shipping them?

In the hundred's of AR speakers that I serviced, in and out of warantee, I found one AR-5 without one woofer machine screw solidly mounted.

It would appear that in a rush to produce it, the assembly person pushed the T-nut into the cabinet and no-one else noticed anything until I serviced it.

One would have a better chance of winning a lottery than finding a goof-up from any of the classic speaker manufacturers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 9 months later...
Hi again;

More photos;

#1 is a real closeup of the inside of an 5 tweeter array.

Hi, I noticed this post while taking a leisurely walk around the site. I invite posters to compare the units in my ad to picture #1 in this post, and picture #10 in the previous one. See any similarities? ;)

There were two versions of Matsus manufactured, one better than the other. Hopefully those Microstat arrays used the preferred model.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 years later...

I've restored 5 pair of these neat little tweeter arrays so far. The lowest SN was 07118 and the highest was 15665. All of them had the black glued-on backs and 4 identical tweeters. Earlier ones in this sample had the dreaded black and red PVC caps while later ones had more familiar Japanese electrolytics but in all cases I replaced them with film caps. The latest couple of pair got 0.01 "bypass" caps in addition to the 1uF caps. No audible difference that I can discern but wanted to try that. Photos show polystyrene bypass caps with Daytons and Bennic bypass caps with WIMA film caps.
I've come to the same conclusion as Carl and others: The backs can be pried off with a putty knife and then glued back on (I like Aleene's). No need to "reinforce" the backs as I did on some.
The grilles are tricky to clean in place and I would not want to remove them if they were to be reinstalled. They are just rectangular pieces of cloth, possibly starched because they are stiff, and stapled on.
The flexibility afforded by the 2-position switch along with the volume pot is pretty extensive.
Hookup is not exactly intuitive. The Microstatic terminals are marked with a white dot on one side. For AR speakers the dot goes to terminal 1 and the other goes to terminal 2 (except for the AR-1, which is reversed). For KLH, the dot goes to Ground and the unmarked goes to +/8 ohms. For OTHER speakers there's a method to check for the best HF reproduction using "white noise".
Maybe people who have not appreciated the Microstatics either needed new caps or, as Carl suggested, the grille cloth was muffling the sound. OR they did not have them hooked up properly.
Even with my retired guy hearing I find the Microstatics add some nice air to classic speakers like the AR 3a and KLH Model Twelve. YMMV ;)

post-101828-0-31798100-1401226053_thumb.

post-101828-0-07360200-1401226064_thumb.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...