Hi all - first post, long time lurker..
Just wanted to relay my experience of the humble Mission 760i speakers I picked up for £20 for an office system.
They sounded reasonably good to begin with, but nothing special. I also have 751s, and they were leagues ahead.
I began reading higher praise for the speakers the more I dug about online, and decided it might be worth the effort to try to improve them and/or return them to their original spec - they're over 25 years old after all.
I ordered up some Mundorf caps for the crossovers, dug out some old thickish QED speaker cable for the drivers, and bought some cheap carpet underlay for damping the cabinets. I made up some 12 AWG OFC cables to replace the cruddy Richer Sounds stuff I had been using.
The speakers were lined with foam from the factory in a fairly slapdash fashion - it was around 10mm thick and not remarkably dense. Two layers of the underlay were glued in - again slapdash due to my limited craftsmanship & patience - and the damping felt much more substantial. These are ported so I left the stuffing alone; as per the original design.
The cable originally used to connect the drivers was pretty thin - particularly for the tweeter. The caps were the usual in house stuff from Mission - adequate, but basic.
Out it all came and in went the Mundorfs and the QED cable - all larger and a bit unwieldy on the little moulded plastic panel used by Mission. I did my best to make it look worse with my soldering efforts looking like a Terminator's bad hair day, but it all worked after a tweeter solder came loose first attempt.
So how do the Mission's sound now - better, worse or no different?
Truthfully, they sound amazing - much, much better than before. They're on the end of a little Yamaha mini HiFi at the moment - humble gear, but I'm already trying to remember whether the 751s sounded this good when they were in this system briefly a few years ago. Certainly, I think these would be killers hooked up to some more capable amplification.
I'm not sure how much of the improvement is down to the quality of the new caps - perhaps I've just restored them to spec? I tend to believe good caps make some difference, but equally recapping in itself can bring about a big change. The cables I'm sure have improved things, both internally and externally. My instinct is the damping makes a huge difference - it felt so much denser than the foam in situ.
I set out to get a decent sound on a very small budget, and so far I've spent £35 on these speakers so I think I achieved my goal!
Can't wait to get these in a real system..
Just wanted to relay my experience of the humble Mission 760i speakers I picked up for £20 for an office system.
They sounded reasonably good to begin with, but nothing special. I also have 751s, and they were leagues ahead.
I began reading higher praise for the speakers the more I dug about online, and decided it might be worth the effort to try to improve them and/or return them to their original spec - they're over 25 years old after all.
I ordered up some Mundorf caps for the crossovers, dug out some old thickish QED speaker cable for the drivers, and bought some cheap carpet underlay for damping the cabinets. I made up some 12 AWG OFC cables to replace the cruddy Richer Sounds stuff I had been using.
The speakers were lined with foam from the factory in a fairly slapdash fashion - it was around 10mm thick and not remarkably dense. Two layers of the underlay were glued in - again slapdash due to my limited craftsmanship & patience - and the damping felt much more substantial. These are ported so I left the stuffing alone; as per the original design.
The cable originally used to connect the drivers was pretty thin - particularly for the tweeter. The caps were the usual in house stuff from Mission - adequate, but basic.
Out it all came and in went the Mundorfs and the QED cable - all larger and a bit unwieldy on the little moulded plastic panel used by Mission. I did my best to make it look worse with my soldering efforts looking like a Terminator's bad hair day, but it all worked after a tweeter solder came loose first attempt.
So how do the Mission's sound now - better, worse or no different?
Truthfully, they sound amazing - much, much better than before. They're on the end of a little Yamaha mini HiFi at the moment - humble gear, but I'm already trying to remember whether the 751s sounded this good when they were in this system briefly a few years ago. Certainly, I think these would be killers hooked up to some more capable amplification.
I'm not sure how much of the improvement is down to the quality of the new caps - perhaps I've just restored them to spec? I tend to believe good caps make some difference, but equally recapping in itself can bring about a big change. The cables I'm sure have improved things, both internally and externally. My instinct is the damping makes a huge difference - it felt so much denser than the foam in situ.
I set out to get a decent sound on a very small budget, and so far I've spent £35 on these speakers so I think I achieved my goal!
Can't wait to get these in a real system..
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Hi Radio Raheem
I know this is a more than one year's post.
Just I have a pair of Mission 760i as well, wonder if you can share what value of caps you used for the crossovers, this may be my next project.
BTW, how did it sound in real system?
I know this is a more than one year's post.
Just I have a pair of Mission 760i as well, wonder if you can share what value of caps you used for the crossovers, this may be my next project.
BTW, how did it sound in real system?
I played around with a pair of Mission 737R, and bracing and dampening the cabinet did a lot (it was really resonant and flimsy).
I also damped the tweeter (L-pad) because it was more than 3db too high, and changed the tweeter cap for a better one. They sound a lot better than I expected. I still have them and mainly use them as front speakers in the TV system.
I also damped the tweeter (L-pad) because it was more than 3db too high, and changed the tweeter cap for a better one. They sound a lot better than I expected. I still have them and mainly use them as front speakers in the TV system.
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I recently aquired a pair of these (760i) and they are now 30 years old, I had to reglue the spider outer edge on one of them and have sent the filters to EA (Engelholm Audio) for restoration/upgrade, EA being a high end speaker company also doing customer specific or tailor made speakers I can only asume that the job and components will be first rate, in the meantime I will look into the stuffing/damping seeing as this, as pointed out, is "so so".
I'm sure they will strike the right balance, it is a 30 year old budget speaker after all, no need to go overboard with luxurious high end components if the rest of the design cannot pass that level of quality on to the listener.
It is more a matter of using decent components with the correct values, I bet the original components, capacitors mainly, will have drifted away from their original values over 30 years, so that would be the main thing, the rest is sugar coating.
The sound from these speakers was odd, no presence or bite, it was as if there was a big dip or gap between the mid and the tweeter, and the tweeter range (what was left of it) was way down compared to the mid/low mid level, almost like a sort of badly implemented built in loudness curve that made the speakers sound distant and unengaging.
It is more a matter of using decent components with the correct values, I bet the original components, capacitors mainly, will have drifted away from their original values over 30 years, so that would be the main thing, the rest is sugar coating.
The sound from these speakers was odd, no presence or bite, it was as if there was a big dip or gap between the mid and the tweeter, and the tweeter range (what was left of it) was way down compared to the mid/low mid level, almost like a sort of badly implemented built in loudness curve that made the speakers sound distant and unengaging.