Vintage 1920's?

[johnaec]

Is this the same "Lansing"? : http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6509175503&indexURL=4&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting

John

[Don McRitchie]

It's the same Lansing. Likely from the early 30's, but maybe late 20's. Personally, I have never seen a Lansing driver like that before. The label is the same as earliest type that our resident expert Steve Schell has seen. I'm guessing that Steve will be interested in going after this since he has worked hard towards preserving the most complete collection of Lansing Manufacturing products available. Therefore, I would request that our members not get into a bidding war over it. I'm sure Steve will jump in shortly to add his thoughts on just what it is.

[Steve Schell]

This speaker is a fascinating piece. It now appears that Lansing Manufacturing Co. used this pressed foil oval label for the first years of its existence. I have a Lansing 10" armature driver with this label, and a friend has an identical driver in its small wooden enclosure. Just the other day a fellow in Europe sent me pictures of what must be one of the earliest Lansing moving coil drivers; it also uses this label, and is in its wooden enclosure as well. I believe it used the same basket as the armature speaker being auctioned. I've tried attaching it to this message but failed; I'll send it to Don and maybe he can post it on this thread.

In the earliest days of radio communications headphones were used. The earliest home "loudspeakers" were the gooseneck horns (about 1922) which used what was essentially a headphone driver in a weighted base. Next came the armature driven cone drivers (about 1924) which sounded much better; more bandwidth, though still bass limited. RCA introduced its Radiola 106 speaker in 1926, reportedly the first consumer moving coil cone speaker. At last the public had access to a speaker with both adequate cone area and enough excursion to produce low frequencies. RCA sold many thousands of these for a high price.

My sense is that Lansing adopted and refined the advancing technologies as they came along. It looks like in the 1920s he built accessory speakers to use with the speakerless radios of the time, and shifted to providing mostly smaller speaker drivers to radio manufacturers when they began incorporating built in speakers around 1930. My guess for now is that the Lansing speakers with the foil label all date from 1930 or earlier.

[Don McRitchie]

Steve has asked that I post these pictures for him. This is the speaker that Steve refers to in the first paragraph of his previous post that was owned by a contact in Europe. Steve has subsequently aquired them to add to what I believe is the largest Lansing Manufacturing product collection in existence. If we all bug Steve enough, maybe we can get him to describe this collection, particularly some of the more significant pieces.

[Oldmics]

Just to let everyone know-I had Steves blessings with regards to involving myself in the "Lansing" speaker auction.

Oldmics

[Mr. Widget]

Wow! Very cool... I thought about it, but knew it was going to take a bit of cash.

Congratulations.

Widget

[Steve Schell]

Congratulations to Oldmics! That speaker is one fabulous piece of history.

Yeah Don, I hear ya. I need to get out the camera and document some of this stuff much better than I have so far. At least there has been some progress lately; I've cleaned up the front bedroom Lansing exhibit to the point where one can enter without being in danger of being attacked by falling speakers.

[paragon]

Congratulations Oldmics,

You payed a lot of money for this speaker.
Give us some pics. How does it work ? This is not a field coil. Is there a round coil attached to the cone ? What`s the diameter of this driver ?

Eckhard

[Oldmics]

As soon as I recieve it ,I will post some answers to your questions.


I really acquired it cause I like its style.But being a collectable is nice also.

I have paid less for a single Hartsfield in days gone past.

Oldmics-More stuff than brains!---Stuff is GOOD

[Oldmics]

Heres some pics of the early "Lansing" speaker that I recently acquired.


Now as for working operation-I gotta defer to Steve Schell and his wisdom.

Enjoy

[Oldmics]

More Pics

[Steve Schell]

Thanks for the pictures, oldmics!

This type of speaker is referred to as a reed-armature driver. As I understand it the large horseshoe magnet energizes the pole tips with a permanent magnetic field. The coil wound around the poles is very high impedance, usually 3,000 to 10,000 ohms. This impedance is the plate load for the amplifier output tube; the DC component is coupled out with a series capacitor before reaching the coil. The alternating signal current flows through the coil, modulating the magnetic field to attract and repel a thin metal plate (the reed) located between the pole tips in a push pull manner. A thin rod attached to the reed transfers the motion of the reed to the apex of the cone. This is often done directly, though it looks like in this Lansing the "diving board" suspended plate adds some leverage to the motion of the reed in controlling the cone- I haven't seen this before.

These old reed armature speakers can sound quite good, and often have a very nice midrange. Bass is quite limited though, as the cone has to be very stiffly suspended to prevent the reed from striking the pole tips. The moving coil cone speakers which followed these armature designs represented a major step forward in terms of output capability, especially in the low frequencies. The downside was that the speaker now required an output transformer to transform the low voice coil impedance to a high impedance load for the output tube.

I have run reed armature speakers from a modern amplifier by connecting the amplifier outputs to the secondary of an output transformer, and connecting the primary to the armature coil. By hooking up the transformer backwards this way, the impedances are matched fairly well. The small single ended 3500 ohm to 8 ohm radio transformers work well for this.

[Steve Gonzales]

I can't tell you how friggen' COOL it is to see these wonderful objects of Art!. I am very grateful that this site has members that hold such high regard for such things. THANK YOU for sharing it with us!!!!. I hope all you long time Senior Members will take advantage of the new Gallery feature and share some more amazing pieces with us. My heart beats a little faster when I get to see the tangible evidence of history in the making. Congratulations Oldmics.