LWE Acoustron loudspeakers??

[Jstagzsr]

I didn't put this in the computer audio section because it's not computer audio.. I know this is not computer-related but I still wanted to probe the brains of the very knowledgeable people that are on this site. 

 

Does anyone have any idea what these speakers are or what these electronics are in the cabinet? I can find extremely limited information online about them..

 

Apparently Louis w. Erath from Houston Texas is some guy that makes speakers. These are apparently from 1963-1973.. I think they're called the lwe1 or lwe2. But the ONLY other pix I've seen on forums they had some amp built into the back of theirs and these don't have an amp. Unless that's what these electronics are inside.

 

I'm trying to figure out how to hook these up to a regular 2 plug (+,-,) speaker connection.. these came with an old receiver and the plugs were rigged up to random things I side the receiver. Clearly not stock.. I can't find any wiring diagrams, I can't find what to bypass, what resistors or capacitors, etc, to add to the lines and where to make them work.. they worked as they were hooked up, but the wires were very skinny and just dangling out of the receiver. I want to hook them up more solid. And I can't do that because I can't find anything online going in depth. Only forums I can't comment in of people talking about them and saying how amazing they apparently are.. they definitely do crank, I can attest to that.. 

 

Any help at all would be appreciated

[harryk]

Quote

Two of the pins are normal speaker inputs, two are for the feedback circuit, and two are unused.

If you happened to connect the receiver's power outputs to the speaker's feedback outputs, that would not be a good thing.

Really to get the best out of these you have to wire in those feedback lines to the right spot inside the amp. There were instructions published for a bunch of amps and receivers of era (ca. 1970). Today it's kinda tricky unless you know your amp circuitry inside and out (which I don't).

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/lwe-speakers-info-needed.784140/

 

[LogicalDrm]

I've moved this thread to Hobby Electronics as you feel like Audio isn't suitable for it.

[Jstagzsr]

1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

I've moved this thread to Hobby Electronics as you feel like Audio isn't suitable for it.

hobby electronics? i really wish you mods didnt just arbitrarily move posts to wherever you felt like.

[Jstagzsr]

1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

I've moved this thread to Hobby Electronics as you feel like Audio isn't suitable for it.

i put it in the general discussion category because there was no category for high end speaker systems. computer audio would be the closest thing but its not computer audio. is there a way to add a category to the drop down list?

[LogicalDrm]

5 minutes ago, Jstagzsr said:

i put it in the general discussion category because there was no category for high end speaker systems. computer audio would be the closest thing but its not computer audio. is there a way to add a category to the drop down list?

Your options are Audio, Hobby Electronics, Home Theater Equipment and Off Topic. Pick one. This is far too special topic to fit "general" part of General Discussion. I would vote Audio myself. While yes, most of it is computer related (duh, this is tech forum), but its also place for anything related to Audio and people who understand those things better.

 

Or if you wish to dispute, feel free to report my post and someone else will see if General is place for this.

[Jstagzsr]

12 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Your options are Audio, Hobby Electronics, Home Theater Equipment and Off Topic. Pick one. This is far too special topic to fit "general" part of General Discussion. I would vote Audio myself. While yes, most of it is computer related (duh, this is tech forum), but its also place for anything related to Audio and people who understand those things better.

 

Or if you wish to dispute, feel free to report my post and someone else will see if General is place for this.

its not so big of a deal that i would bother trying to dispute anything.

Home theater equipment is exactly what this is, so id say that would be a great category to place these in.. But where do you see that? i literally looked at every single topic in the drop down menu trying to find the most appropriate place for this post and i did not see a home theater option. The only thing i saw even relating to audio was the computer audio section.

[LogicalDrm]

5 hours ago, Jstagzsr said:

its not so big of a deal that i would bother trying to dispute anything.

Home theater equipment is exactly what this is, so id say that would be a great category to place these in.. But where do you see that? i literally looked at every single topic in the drop down menu trying to find the most appropriate place for this post and i did not see a home theater option. The only thing i saw even relating to audio was the computer audio section.

It's pretty down, but that's not excuse. I've been here long enough to memorize all subforums and where they are.

[circeseye]

man that is old but... LWE 1 Acoustron speakers Made by Louis W. Erath in USA

inside electronics are a form of crossover with other features that the knobs change
the exterior connectors are Cinch Jones connectors
it took a modded amp was needed that was purpose modded to drive them
the knobs are
Room Gain is the feedback level
middle mf is phase control

right hf is impedance selector

 

i would say if you were to use them with now a day amps..use a newer crossover and not that old crossover system..jyst not sure what power amp to use

but if you can get that crossover working fine with a newer amp go for it....

 

 

[circeseye]

heres a little history

The LWE approach to get around this is based on "negative feedback control". OK....in a typical ampifier (still mostly vacuum tube back in those days, of course) you have anywhere from 25-80% of the output of an ampifier used in reverse phase as negative "feed back" used to minimize distortion and in some gross cases to make an amplifier stable (not oscillate or 'howl'). The out-of -phase signal is fed from the output of an amplifier's final output stage back to the input of that same stage. Actually the same concept can be used in any intermediate stage of amplification as well. The concept works well in lowering distortion and, in some cases, increasing stability. An interesting effect which is actually pretty well known by most design engineers is that if you reduce the negative feedback of an ampilfiers output stage by 3 db the output will increase by 3 db. If there were no other limitations present (power supply current ratings, etc., the amplilfier would double in power. Of course there might be a slight increase in distortion in some designs depending on the original design goals and criteria in design. Erath's principle was to reduce the negative feedback selectively only at the extreme low frequencies where a
big 15" woofer in a really tiny box was just not capable of responding fully. This would leave the feedback and distortion character untouched at frequencies up above 50-70 HZ.

Erath's feedback control unit was in the speaker box next to the crossover network. That meant that the negative feedback lines from the amp's output stage had to be "clipped" and extended out to the speaker using some 6 conductor shielded Belden cable. 2 conductors for the regular voice coil audio, and 4 conductors for feedback 2 incoming and 2 outgoing. This was all connected using 6 conductor TRW/Cinch-Jones "jones Plugs" which made it all very convenient and inexpensive.

As you can imagine, some amplifiers didn't seem to care about having 15 or so db of their negative feed-back 'whacked away' at the low frequencies and some didn't like it all. In Erath's defense, I will say that he recognized and dealt with this problem in a very honorable way and would openly tell prospective buyers which amplifiers worked well and which ones didn't. Erath made a 60 watt per channel solid state amp that nestled right into a cavity that was in the rear of the model 1 box and was isolated from the inside of the box. This one was so stable it would allow far more feedback to be removed than most commercially available amplifiers at the time.

So.....how well did they work? In a word, extremely well. The model 1 had a rather high efficiecy (96 db at 1 w/1meter) 15" woofer with a fairly stiff suspension with a 5 " high efficiency cone mid range (both made by Chacag Telephone Supply or 'CTS'),and an Electro-Voice T-35 for high output 'top-end' response. This was the same tweeter used in the 104 db at 1 meter/1 watt K-horn at the time so you can see that the tweeter would have to have about 6-8 db of padding to match this combo). This was sort of like a "hot-rod and scaled up model 'H' if you will. I even know of a few cases where Klipsch K-1000 horns were tried with various drivers and padded 6-8 db instead of the 5" paper cone radiator, but I always thought that the CTS 15 incher didn't have enough output in the 600-1KHZ range to use this mid range because a slight 'trough' in the response curve would develop in this range. (a larger 600 HZ mid range horn would not fit inside the box though)

A very neutral sounding speaker system with very little or virtually no coloration or "sound character" of its own. It played loud like the Klipsch model H, but the extreme low-end down in the mid 20HZ region would rattle the fluorecent light fixtures in the old sound room at (now long-gone) Audio Center sound room, . It compared so well to really large high efficiency classical systems that we ended up placing them on top of the Klipschorns and of course comparing them frequently on a variety of program material.

 

 

interesting stuff