Just been daydreaming about speaker builds, and thought I liked the look of Visatons, because they're cheap and have have pretty neat Frequency Response charts. Until I go to calculate the enclosure and they come out freakishly huge. Like, 200 litres for an 8 inch woofer (W 200 8). The 6.5 inch version has a qts of 0.81, and a similarly sized cabinet. I was scratching my head for a bit, wondering if the datasheet was wrong, until someone mentioned 'open baffle'. So does that mean you can either stuff them in a smaller cabinet and ruin that beautiful flat frequency chart, OR just rely on your room to do that for you? The other thing that comes up is a lot of people seem to like them for replacing 'vintage' speakers. So i guess in a small enclosure they're kind of a bit lazy, warm, quiet - good for the oldies? They do have a bit of that aesthetic to them. They don't have that aggressive kind of garish 'Lamborghini" kind of design language that others go for.
That said they have these 4 inch FR speakers that look great for satellites or bluetooth speakers. I haven't quite looked at their 12 inches - but I'm thinking those would actually work quite nicely in a guitar amp?
Interested in anyone's experiences with them
https://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/p/V-9063-W170/W+170+-+8+Ohm
https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/visaton-gmbh-co-kg/FRS-8-M-8-OHM/9842306
That said they have these 4 inch FR speakers that look great for satellites or bluetooth speakers. I haven't quite looked at their 12 inches - but I'm thinking those would actually work quite nicely in a guitar amp?
Interested in anyone's experiences with them
https://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/p/V-9063-W170/W+170+-+8+Ohm
https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/visaton-gmbh-co-kg/FRS-8-M-8-OHM/9842306
W200 Designed for sealed with high Q
So yes relatively similar to many older speaker systems.
3 dB lowend peak, which helps with the 6 dB you loose to full space.
As with any speaker, the data sheet shows response on standard test baffle.
Which is extremely large for flat response. In real life on small baffles.
There is full space loses and ideal crossover for a woofer is near baffle step.
So a non flat response is rather intentional to get a flat response
in fullspace and crossed over
W170 pretty conventional 6.5" which works for a 2 way.
And typical 1" dome tweeter easily crosses over with it.
More affordable stamp basket / paper cone like many others.
Its big brother W170S be more expensive cast frame.
better cone/surround higher price etc etc.
pretty extensive use in" Alto" series.
Alto 1
Alto 11
Alto 111
Alto MK line 11
FRS8 fullrange decent flat response. Works fine as midrange
or woofer assisted wideband. Desktop speaker
Visaton designs use it for both purposes
woofer assisted wideband stella light
or small surround/ desktop CT80
HiFi 12" for guitar...no
generalized a guitar 12" is light cone, stiff suspension, small voice coil
for high sensitivity and highend.
generalized a HiFi 12" heavier cone, loose suspension. large voice coil
for bass, not much high-end, lower sensitivity than live audio
pretty much opposites.
Unless of course with modern practice rigs.
normal hifi speakers/ monitors are used.
And the software emulates classic guitar cabs
So yes relatively similar to many older speaker systems.
3 dB lowend peak, which helps with the 6 dB you loose to full space.
As with any speaker, the data sheet shows response on standard test baffle.
Which is extremely large for flat response. In real life on small baffles.
There is full space loses and ideal crossover for a woofer is near baffle step.
So a non flat response is rather intentional to get a flat response
in fullspace and crossed over
W170 pretty conventional 6.5" which works for a 2 way.
And typical 1" dome tweeter easily crosses over with it.
More affordable stamp basket / paper cone like many others.
Its big brother W170S be more expensive cast frame.
better cone/surround higher price etc etc.
pretty extensive use in" Alto" series.
Alto 1
Alto 11
Alto 111
Alto MK line 11
FRS8 fullrange decent flat response. Works fine as midrange
or woofer assisted wideband. Desktop speaker
Visaton designs use it for both purposes
woofer assisted wideband stella light
or small surround/ desktop CT80
HiFi 12" for guitar...no
generalized a guitar 12" is light cone, stiff suspension, small voice coil
for high sensitivity and highend.
generalized a HiFi 12" heavier cone, loose suspension. large voice coil
for bass, not much high-end, lower sensitivity than live audio
pretty much opposites.
Unless of course with modern practice rigs.
normal hifi speakers/ monitors are used.
And the software emulates classic guitar cabs
Thanks for the help. I'm thinking they would be a bit too 'specific' for my needs. I had my suspicions they had cheated a bit to get that response. In the same price range - Peerless/Tymphany or even Dayton would give a bit more of a 'modern' sound. A lot tighter. They do have a range of drivers though, I'm thinking of pairing the 4 inch FRs (which come in at 1.1L) with some radiators and a planar tweeter. Just because they should be able to cross-over at 4khz. As an experiment. And the reason I might be looking at guitar drivers is that I bought a Boss Katana MkII - and while a fantastic amp - the drivers in it are a bit lacking. They're fine, but a bit difficult to work with. But I get what you mean about the Visatons maybe being a bit too deep
A somewhat late reply into this thread, but I thought my observations on Visaton drive units may be of interest to a few people.
I decided to get back into speaker building since I needed speakers that were rather smaller and less imposing than my ancient KLH 317s after remodeling our living room. I needed a design that was tall and narrow and not too deep. There is nothing available commercially that meets my requirements. I decided to build a “Proof of concept” design modeled in boxsim. To meet the “narrow” requirement I decided on 4” drive units, so I chose the Visaton W100s. I used 4 x 4 ohm arranged with two pairs of two in series each with their own 60W amp (Tda7293) as per unit power handling is 30W RMS.
Midrange was handled by another series pair of W100s in an MTM with a Morel CAT298 from my upgraded KLHs.
I had a neighbour who loves a bit of woodworking and he very kindly machined the front panel for me.
I knew that to get anywhere close to the bass performance of the Peerless 10” I’d have to use a linkwitz transform even using 4 bass drivers and even then I’d probably hit excursion limits before the amps started to clip at high volumes.
I ran the bass up to 300 Hz, and the mids from 300 to 3.5KHz, with the treble above that. Crossover was 4th order LR. I did use baffle step compensation also.
After eliminating a lot of stupid mistakes and having got everything working correctly I have to say I was very pleased with the sound. To say it was a vast improvement on the KLHs is a huge understatement! I demonstrated these to my teenage nephews who said “where is all that bass coming from?” They couldn’t believe that such a skinny looking speaker could produce that much bass!
This worked extremely well, but ended up much too tall due to the number of drive units and I had to squeeze in a fairly beefy PSU in the base and have room for heatsinks on the amps (4 x 60W).
This led to other designs where I used slightly larger and more powerful drive units to reduce the height to a more acceptable level.
I will definitely recycle these Visatons though into a somewhat smaller cabinet as I was entirely happy with the sound.
I decided to get back into speaker building since I needed speakers that were rather smaller and less imposing than my ancient KLH 317s after remodeling our living room. I needed a design that was tall and narrow and not too deep. There is nothing available commercially that meets my requirements. I decided to build a “Proof of concept” design modeled in boxsim. To meet the “narrow” requirement I decided on 4” drive units, so I chose the Visaton W100s. I used 4 x 4 ohm arranged with two pairs of two in series each with their own 60W amp (Tda7293) as per unit power handling is 30W RMS.
Midrange was handled by another series pair of W100s in an MTM with a Morel CAT298 from my upgraded KLHs.
I had a neighbour who loves a bit of woodworking and he very kindly machined the front panel for me.
I knew that to get anywhere close to the bass performance of the Peerless 10” I’d have to use a linkwitz transform even using 4 bass drivers and even then I’d probably hit excursion limits before the amps started to clip at high volumes.
I ran the bass up to 300 Hz, and the mids from 300 to 3.5KHz, with the treble above that. Crossover was 4th order LR. I did use baffle step compensation also.
After eliminating a lot of stupid mistakes and having got everything working correctly I have to say I was very pleased with the sound. To say it was a vast improvement on the KLHs is a huge understatement! I demonstrated these to my teenage nephews who said “where is all that bass coming from?” They couldn’t believe that such a skinny looking speaker could produce that much bass!
This worked extremely well, but ended up much too tall due to the number of drive units and I had to squeeze in a fairly beefy PSU in the base and have room for heatsinks on the amps (4 x 60W).
This led to other designs where I used slightly larger and more powerful drive units to reduce the height to a more acceptable level.
I will definitely recycle these Visatons though into a somewhat smaller cabinet as I was entirely happy with the sound.