Hey, I'm Famous!!!

[Don McRitchie]

My definition of "Kabuki Speaker" (http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=113874) that I gave on the AK forum has been lifted as an entry into the Web's "Urban Dictionary" here:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kabuki+Speaker

Now, if I can only get it into the Oxford English Dictionary, I'll be immortal.

[Don C]

Congratulations! There was always a need for a term to describe those speakers, and you supplied it. It was inevitable that it would be picked up by others and used forever.

[Wardsweb]

Wow and to think I knew you when you were just another audio enthusiast.

[Mr. Widget]

The Pioneer CS-99A would be one of those... they still go for more than they should, dented dust caps and all. I do have an unnatural fascination with them though. Here is a pair from a recent e-Bay auction.

Widget

[Don McRitchie]

Below is a veritable Kabirama. I put this collage together for a thread on AK calked "What Gear do You Hate". The centre picture illustrates the Pioneer CS-901 which was the system to which I first applied the term "Kabuki Speaker". As I said at the time, "This abomination wasn't engineered - it was speced out by the marketing department. It's just a mindless copy of every speaker cliche they could think of."

The coaxial driver is priceless. It has the tweeter aimed at your ankles (the first ankle biter speaker http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif ). More importantly, its design defeats the entire purpose of using a coaxial driver. Coaxials tend to be expensive to manufacture, but the cost is offset with the benefit of superior imaging from having all drivers acting as a single point source. This is completely defeated when you add a discrete midrange horn and phyiscally separate it from the bass/HF drivers.

If you look carefully, you'll see that the multicell is not even an actual horn/driver. It's a small aluminum tweeter cone over which they have plunked a plastic multicell. The tweeter is just glued to the pole piece as evidenced by the fact that they had to run the tweeter leads through the bass cone to reach the driver.

Below is link to an article that explains the "engineering" behind such systems.

http://decware.com/paper10.htm

[LE15-Thumper]

My definition of "Kabuki Speaker" (http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=113874) that I gave on the AK forum has been lifted as an entry into the Web's "Urban Dictionary" here:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kabuki+Speaker

Now, if I can only get it into the Oxford English Dictionary, I'll be immortal.


We're not worthy !


http://www.allposters.com/IMAGES/MMPH/245745.jpg

[duaneage]

My God , Don you have awakened bad memories.


Being a GI in the 80's , most of my barracks mates had these horrible speakers, most notable were the marantz uglies on the lower right my own roomate tortured me with. Some even had LED power meters on them. One day a poor guy asked me to fix one for him, had a popped capacitor that opened up the midrange circuit. Discovered that not only were the SUPERTWEETERS not even connected, but the magnet on the woofer was smaller than the one used in my control1 monitor. The absolute worse had to be the time aligned junque Technics sold with the disk tweeters and midranges. Ugh!

[aicpjim]

I'm so glad I got educated on these! I saw an ad on craigslist for a pair of Sansui SP-X 9700 speakers for $50, and I talked him down to $40, thinking I would have a wonderful pair of vintage speakers. After all, I had noticed that the last pair of these had sold on eBay for $465! So I thought - what the heck? I'll take a chance on $40...

They were in excellent condition, so I hooked them up to a vintage HK receiver of mine, and...... well - let's just say I was underwhelmed.... Kabuki music is a perfect description. The little 2-way bookshelf speakers I normally use, with the 5 inch drivers, sounded better.

So I said - time to put 'em on ebay and make a buck out of these! Mine didn't reach $465 for some reason, though they were in the same or better condition. However, they did reach $203, so I made a tidy profit on them. Broke even on shipping...

[jcrobso]

He knew they didn't sound the best but he like the look of them.:blink:
I replaced all the speakers with a 3 way Beyma system and they sounded sooo much better.;)

[Ducatista47]

From that Decware paper:


Inspect the speakers... see any plastic?.... walk away.
So walk away from a lot of Harman/JBL offerings of recent years. How the mighty have fallen.

Don't the LSR series of monitors and the EOS waveguides have plastic elements?

[allen mueller]

There is no plastic on my LSR 6332's. The midrange and tweeter are mounted to a cast aluminum panel that is thick with ribs.

AL

[moparfan]

It was carbon fiber on the LSR32 and LSR28, then they changed it to ABS or some kind of bulk molding compound for the 63 series? I believe they said they did it for production purposes as the carbon fiber was too difficult to work with.