I have had these speakers and have described them as "muddy" in this forum--my solution was to sell them on eBay. However, someone has asked me if there's a way to "cure" the muddiness so I'm asking your opinions. The Sansuis are 3-ways with a 12" woof, TWO 5" mids and TWO one inch cone tweeters.
Solutions--
1. Buy new drivers? Essentially using only the Sansui boxes--seems overly expensive since a person could probably buy a whoole speaker for the price of drivers.

2. Try to find eBay auction of used drivers???? hotgas sold some EPI drivers w/ crossovers on eBay since his cabinets were shot.
But it seems it would take a LONG time to find just the right package, and the fact that the Sansuis have five speakers seems hard to replicate.

3. Try to tweak individual drivers??? Maybe replace the TWO cone tweeters with something else to add more top-end sparkle??? Replace the 12" Sansui woofers with something punchier???

4. Could the crossover be tweaked to add more punch??? They have a "tone" control on the back of the speaker, but it doesn't seem particularly effective in curing muddiness.

Finally, this WOULD have to be seen as a potentially fun project, wouldn't it???? The Sansui owner would have to be interested in playing around with drivers and be willing to make several mistakes before ending up with acceptable/great speakers. If merely looking for good-sounding speakers, he might be better selling the Sansuis and buying others that aren't muddy.

TIA,
TY

TY, I'm a bit surprised to find you're finding muddiness in Sansui speakers. The only pair I ever had were very 'breezy' sounding. I'm still trying to get back to that sound.

Speakers are alway fun to play with. Were they mine I think I'd just alter things that are easy, cheap and temporary. Specifically, start with putting them on stands of various heights, or vary the amount/type of stuffing in the cabinet and the size and lenth of the port, if there is one. You'd probably have half a days' worth of experiments just with those couple of things. If the the results still don't please you, you've lost little and can easily ebay them afterward. ;)

Jay,
I posted my thoughts about muddiness in a thread about the SP-1500 speakers---opinions there were all over the map from great Sansuis to awful depending on the model. I'm assuming maybe that you have a good model while I had an awful model (SP-200).
Below is a pic of the speaker: notice that BIG, HONKIN' port--almost looks like they drilled another hole for a 5" midrange. Wonder how much the sound could be tweaked by adjusting its size????
TY
Just to reiterate, this is for the benefit of someone else who asked me about the speakers after agreeing about the muddy sound: his question just got me thinking about what I COULD have done.

There are a pair of SP-200's on eBay right now (opening bid $99 & no takers yet).

Part of the item description is
"I think with a little love and oil these would look great. The have a few light scuffs and are a little dusty. They sound preety good. They seem to handle a lot of power with no pops or distortion. To me they sound a little muddy but I comparing them to Klipsh in my livingroom. They do have some punch to them! "

Even this seller finds them "muddy."

Thanks for the pix, that port may explain a lot with that model.
It 'seems' much too large for that box/driver complement.
For an idea, let me mention my Marantz DS900, they have what Marantz called the "Vari-Q" system: a port, and a plug (of foam); you could opt for either a ported, more efficient sound, or a tighter, cleaner sound of a sealed (more or less) box.

Try some experiments with the port dimensions or plugging the port altogether. I'm curious.

have fun with 'em,
pete

Wacky alert!!!! Wacky Alert!!!!
What follows is going to be wacky so it SHOULD NOT be viewed by children.
There's something similar in Dynaudio speakers called a "Variovent"--similarly a foam plug in a port. In searching for the above, I found the following on the North Creek site re: their speaker ports---
"Low Frequency Balance:
The extreme low end output of the Rhythm loudspeaker is controlled by the length of straws in the port tube. There is a section in the manual regarding port tuning, but following is a brief description of what to expect:

A port tube with long straws with have very deep bass but at a reduced level. One can tune the Rhythm as low as 25 Hz, but the low end output will be greatly reduced and extremely overdamped.

A port tube with short straws (or no straws) will have a lot of output but higher in frequency. One can tune the port as high as 48 Hz, and the Rhythm will produce a whole lot of boom at that one frequency.

We target a tuning between 35 and 39 Hz. This is achieved by using 5" straws pushed through the port such that they stick out 1" beyond the end of the port tube and into the cabinet. This is the optimum "QB3" alignment.

One must note it is not carved in stone what tuning will be best for the room and equipment. The loudspeaker has the ability to be tuned anywhere in the octave between 25 and 50 Hz, which an output control of about 6dB."

In other words, stuff the Sansui port with straws!!!!! At least it would be a cheap tweak!!!

Are those the bendy straws or the straight one. Also will using differnt colors affect it. Or how about the crazy straws ??? :p:

I will try some things this week to improve the sound of my sp-200's, begining playing with the port opening.

I will gladly use my sp-200's as guinea pigs to try and get some sound improvement. That is... to the best of my ability and wallet.

I'd like to keep them only if I can get them to sound better. I am not in love with the grills. It seems to me that the wood lattice front grill blocks a percentage of the sound from coming thru.

I have a pair of vintage RS optimus 5B speakers that have bad cabinets but new looking drivers. Also it has an involved x-over circuitry to adjust mids and highs. I don't mind using these for parts, if they will work to improve the sp-200.

There is no loss for me. The sp-200's were givien to me, and the optimus 5b's cost me $12. This will be a good learning project for me and perhaps others as well who have similar problems with these "muddy" speakers.

You might try the "foam in the BIG HONKIN' port" trick first--that couldn't be expensive. And you could use plumbing PVC to make the port smaller--- just wrap with foam 'til it's big enough to fill the hole??

It'd be interesting how the Optimus woofer sounds in the Sansui box.
TY

I took the fronts off and listened. There is no sound coming out of the 2 tweeters on both speakers. This is with the switch on the back set to "clear". More highs come out of the mid-ranges in the "clear" position, but nothing out of the tweeters.

Just for kicks I plugged the big ports up and it sounded alittle more boomier, but did nothing for the highs.

I wonder if there is some production problem with the cross-overs or some elements of it affecting the highs. Because it seems there are at least a few sp-200's out there that have this similar muddy sound.

Tonite I will remove the backs and poke around. Are there any items in particuler that I should check for besides the obvious like wire connections and switch contacts. With sound on, should'nt I be able to detect voltage across the tweets? I'm open to suggestions.......thx

I opened the back up and did not find anything obvious to me.

I really don't want to spend the time taking apart the crossovers and experimenting with stuff. I will try removing one if the individual tweeters to see if I can get sound out of that. If I do, then it seems to me the problem is in the x-over network or switch. Maybe I'll try and bypass the x-ver switch and see what happens

I've had a similiar "problem" with my sansui sp-x8000. Sometimes it seems as no sound is coming out of the 2 tweeters. I ran a test disc through them and they do reproduce the HF sounds, just can't always hear it. As far as spending money on the sp-200's. I pickes up the 8000 for 55.00 bucks at a "pawn" shop, big 16" woofers and lots of punch. Wait for a deal on something better and part out the sp-200's. just MHO

I'm a new owner of an old pair of SP-200's... might even have been one of the pairs you were looking at on Ebay. You were asking about things you could look at in the crossover circuit. In the short time I've had these, I would say carefully check the condition of the crossover selector switch. One of these here was getting dirty and noisy and cutting out. If the contacts got dirty enough to go completely open, that could cause the muddiness you described. Just a thought.

I have a pair of SP200s; one thing I did that helped a BUNCH, was to take out the original port tube, make up a cover plate out of 3/8" wood to go over the original port hole in the baffle, and cut out a hole in the plate, to install a 3" diameter, 7" to 8" long port tube. This retunes the box from like, 50 Hz to like 32 Hz or so, and really seemed to take out the boominess.

If the horn supertweeters aren't working, then that is a definite problem. One thing that comes to mind, is to try to find some small, 4-ohm tweeters, that will fit in place of these... you could wire them in series and they would make an 8 ohm load (which would be the same as the original 2 16 ohm tweeters in parallel, so the crossover should still work OK). Or, in alternative, replace ONE of the tweeters with a good 8 ohm tweeter, and simply disconnect the other horn and leave it in there to plug up the hole...

Otherwise, changing out the grilles (I made up a set, using some hardware store molding as a frame, and covered them with black cloth) will help clear up the "confused" sound caused by interference of the grille with the driver outputs. This smoothed out the high frequency range, quite a bit, especially off axis (at angles not directly in front of the speaker, listening).

Other than this, I would not be inclined to do major renovations on these. Either they will sound good to you by the end of these procedures... or they'll need SO MUCH work and parts replacement, that it genuinely WILL be a better idea, cost and time, to just replace them with something you like better...

Regards,
Gordon.