Chas
05-03-2005, 01:43 PM
Yesterday I hauled my 4430's out of storage to replace the HF diaphragms. I was aware that early 4430's had Alnico HF's but I thought that the diaphragms were all titanium, just like the later ferrites.
Well, it turns out that mine are 2421A's dated 1983 with diamond surrounds but the diaphragms look like aluminum. How do you tell? These certainly look like aluminum.
By the way, I bought the 4430's about a year ago and my first impressions were not favorable when I compared them to my large format system. I stored them away for later work as I was in the middle of my LF projects with no time to fiddle with them.
Anyway, I hooked them up again and got pretty much the same story yesterday, no highs, choked midrange, man - it was awful. Then I rotated the biamp/passive switch (probably never done in their lifetime) a few times and then things went crazy....Holy crap! Now I understand what everyone is talking about. I never thought a two way system with a 1" comp driver/horn could impress me like this.
Lesson learned, keep those connections and switch contacts clean!:blink:
Well, it turns out that mine are 2421A's dated 1983 with diamond surrounds but the diaphragms look like aluminum. How do you tell? These certainly look like aluminum.
By the way, I bought the 4430's about a year ago and my first impressions were not favorable when I compared them to my large format system. I stored them away for later work as I was in the middle of my LF projects with no time to fiddle with them.
Anyway, I hooked them up again and got pretty much the same story yesterday, no highs, choked midrange, man - it was awful. Then I rotated the biamp/passive switch (probably never done in their lifetime) a few times and then things went crazy....Holy crap! Now I understand what everyone is talking about. I never thought a two way system with a 1" comp driver/horn could impress me like this.
Lesson learned, keep those connections and switch contacts clean!:blink: