Repair of Seeburg 220 Cabinet Speakers...

Hello! My name is Michael and this is my first post to this forum, so thank you to the hosts.

I am currently restoring a Seeburg 220, and the cone on one of the cabinet speakers is shredded. I have three questions regarding these cabinet speakers:

(1) Is there a good, modern replacement speaker out there? (Hopefully not too much money!)

(2) Alternatively, can anybody recommend a reconing kit for this particular speaker?

(3) Does anybody know the specifications on these speakers? THe service manual I have doesn't say much, and I'm having difficulty finding the spec's.

Thanks in advance for any assistance in answering any or all of these questions.

Hello Micahael and welcome to the boards. As to your speaker problem: it is nessesary to have both speakers match in tone quality and efficancy. If the other speaker is good then look for a used one from the same model juke as yours.(see stickies above for sources of parts.) Although you can get a cheap 12 incher from Radio Shack it will not match the one that is already in there now. Good luck. Norman

Norman,

Thank you for the welcome and the reply.

Yes, I will be replacing both speakers either by (1) reconing or (2) buying two new speakers. The cone material is aged and fragile, so my goal is to replace both speakers by either method.

I saw that reconing kits are almost as much as new speakers.

I was just wondering if anybody had recommendations for either a reconing kit (to match the current speakers) or new speakers that match the spec's of the old speakers.

Best Regards,
Michael

Michael, those speakers are 16 ohm and have a free-air resonance of around 70-72 hz. They are also fairly efficient.

About a year ago another poster indicated that he had good results with a pair of Jensen "Vintage" series in a 222.

http://www.jensentone.com/vintage_ceramic

Personally, I suggest reconing -if- the shop can get a reasonable match to the original. Essentially, any 12" 16 ohm that Seeburg used from the late 1950s will be OK. While the 222 did supposedly use speakers voiced to have at least some highs, this will never be anything more than mediocre. Twelve-inch speakers are not suitable to handle high frequencies.

In 1986 I bought a badly parted-out 222. There was really only a keyboard and mech left along with some of the upper cabinet.

Over the next three years I assembled everything needed including the speaker harness. I opted to use two speakers from an LPC (I had several) along with adding a horn tweeter to each channel. In this case I switched the crossover box in the machine to "yes" on the question of external speakers. In this position it places a 6 db choke in series with the 12" making them strictly woofers. This combination vastly improves the sound from these machines.

This is a similar tweeter to the ones I used:
http://www.pyleaudio.com/sku/PH25/3-x-3-Horn-Tweeter

You will need to add an 8 ohm resistor of around ten watts in series to properly load the 16 ohm amp. Most of these tweeter come with a suitable capacitor to make the simple 6 db crossover.

Rob/NYC

Wow, Rob, that's really great info.

Thank you very much.

Michael