Any info on Fisher KS-2 Speakers?

Tim D

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I've got a line on Fisher KS-2's. Wondering if anyone knew anything about them other than they look like the KS-1 kit speakers and that the KS-2's are more rare and were probably sold for a shorter period. Anyone have a set? Any info at all besides the sales brochures? If they sound good I might pick them up and complete a kit system with my KX-100 and KM-60.

EDIT: Changed KX-1 and KX-2 to be KS-1 and KS-2.
 
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KX???? For Speakers??? Got a brochure pic??

Sorry. I'm getting dislexic. I meant KS-2. Here's a pic from the web. Not the ones I'm looking at but same model. I wish I could get them with the stands shown. That would be cool.
BTW, how can I update the thread title?

Fisher-ks-2.jpg
 
Open this thread. At the top on the right side just above the 1st post is a drop down box called thread tools. One of the tools is "EDIT TITLE" Click on EDIT TITLE and make change, save and call it a day.

I'm pretty sure those stands were custom made as the KS-2's were originally designed for wall hanging. IIRC the KS-1's were the same size as the WS-1's. They were late 60's speakers. Any of the XP-x series before the XP-10 would be more appropriate for a period system.
 
Open this thread. At the top on the right side just above the 1st post is a drop down box called thread tools. One of the tools is "EDIT TITLE" Click on EDIT TITLE and make change, save and call it a day.

I'm pretty sure those stands were custom made as the KS-2's were originally designed for wall hanging. IIRC the KS-1's were the same size as the WS-1's. They were late 60's speakers. Any of the XP-x series before the XP-10 would be more appropriate for a period system.

Thanks Larry. Edited the thread title.

Well I have a couple of pair of XP-7B's that I could use. Or I could just stick with my KLH Sixes that I love so much.
 
Ok. Bought them. Picked them up cheap. They are bigger than I thought.. The grills are in great shape and the veneer is salvageable. The corners are pulling apart though. I can't see any swelling of the wood, so I'm unsure why they are pulling apart. They came in Kit form or factory assembled.

They are much bigger than my KLH Sixes. Found a reference in the 1965 Allied Catalog on page 161 for them. Here is a pick of that reference. They are the Daddy to the KS-1's. The ones I picked up are definitely walnut, but not sure yet if they are the kit or assembled version mentioned in the catalog. These are going to be fun because they seem to be scarce and unique and will pair nicely with the KX-100 and KM-60 that I'm working on. Potentially I could put together a system with Fisher Kit components.

Edit: It also appears on page 193 of the 1964 Allied catalog too.

Fisher KS-1 KS-2.png
 
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Here's a pic from page 193 of the 1964 Allied Catalog. Seems they dropped the price of the KS-2 in 1965. I'm continuing to dig, but by 1967 only the KS-1 was appearing in the Allied catalog. I will try to check the 1963 and 1966 years to see if they advertised the KS-2.

Fisher KS-1 KS-2 1964 Allied Cat.png
 
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So the KS-1 seems to have been offered from 1963 through 1967. The KS-2 seems to only have been offered in 1964 and 1965, but I will continue to dig.

Edit: Found a Dec 1961 print ad in Stereo Review for the KS-1. That seems to be when the KS-1 started.

Fisher KS-1 Stereo Review Print Ad Dec 1961.png
 
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I'm going to need some badges to complete them. I'll be looking into what badges are correct. Excepting for the corners separating these should be an easy restore - assuming the drivers are all good.

Last night I hooked them up. One sounded fine - the other sounded muted. I'll be opening them up and checking the drivers (tweets) and caps as part of the restoration.

Here's a couple of pics. These are next to my KLH Sixes. You can see how big are they. Presumably with the 12" woofs they are bigger than the KS-1's which are supposed to only have 10" woofs. I'm doing this not because I think they'll knock my socks off, but because they are a bit of history and should be a nice addition to a vintage Fisher system.

Not sure how I might determine if they are kit versions or factory assembled. There are no distinctions on the outside such as special part/model numbers. They just say "KS-2" and don't have the suffix extension that would show they were actually kits.

So to recap: I have found an advertisement from Dec 1961 Stereo Review for the KS-1, so...
KS-1 ran from late 1961 through to 1967?
KS-2 seems to have been in 1964 and 1965 [EDIT: Post 31 of this thread indicates that the KS-2 was still appearing in the 1968 Fisher handbook. http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....e-old-fisher-speakers-worthless.96754/page-2]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of them out there. Info I've seen in some places mentioned hanging KS-1's on walls. I haven't seen that info about hanging KS-2's on the wall. They'd cover a lot of wall - but maybe that would be a nice experiment - to see how they sound at ear level on a wall! Alternatively, a nice set of 4" stands such as those on the web would be cool.

IMG_2998.JPG IMG_2999.JPG
 
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I opened up the one that sounds muted - hoping that I wouldn't find a blown tweeter.

Found out why it is muted. The pot on the back has the wiper open-circuited and that is in series with the tweeter and its' cross-over cap. The tweeter was simply not getting any signal at all. The tweeter itself measures 3.9 ohm in-circuit. I measured the pot end-to-end and it returned 25.7 ohms. On the back is a number "25", so potentially it is a 25 ohm pot. It will be nice if I can get a functionally identical one or do some surgery on it to repair it. I'll draw up a circuit on paper and scan it in. Not a very complex cross-over. Tweeter is first order and so is the midrange (band-pass). The woofer is also first order.

Strange part of this is that the tweeter has a much bigger magnet than the mid-range driver although the mid might be alnico and the tweet seems to be ceramic. I visually had it backward until I looked at the cross-over. The cross-over is labeled as to which wire goes to the tweeter and which one goes to the mid-range driver.

Some observations on the construction and condition....

- It has all the original drivers which is good.

- The cross-over board is covered with a brown paper printed circuit drawing. It might be possible that this truely was a kit and that these were part of the diagrams and instructions on wiring the cross-over. It would be great if I could find the assembly instructions for a set of these speakers to confirm. I haven't seen such a basic diagram behind a factory assembled cross-over, but who knows?

- The speaker is an acoustic suspension design with no ports, but it is poorly sealed. This is both a design issue and a construction issue. This speaker cabinet is leaky! There is no sealant around the back panel and it is screwed in place, but ill-fitting. I won't need to be doing a push test to look for air leaks here. I'll have to put some thought into how to seal this cabinet.

- There were three 1" sheets of fiberglass as the batting that are the dimensions of the back panel. Not particularly inventive and I'm not sure it was good enough, but there isn't room for much more.

- The cabinet is so shallow that there is actually a 5/8" indendentation routed out of the back panel for the woofer magnet. I don't think the back panel would fit without the routed out depression in that panel.

- The corners of the cabinet are separating. Part of that is that the cabinet walls are starting to curve. It might be possible to use strong clamps and glue to pull it together again, but it will take some thought.

- Drivers are all screwed in from the inside. It is difficult to tell, but I don't think there is any sealant on the driver faces to the front baffle. (Just another form of air leaks.)

- I measured the two caps in the cross-over and my meter didn't return the labeled values. A 2uF cap measured as 0.7uF. The other 4uF cap measured as 6.2uF. They are both "Callins" caps with the red ends. These have to go away.

- Measured the DC resistance of the 3 drivers in-circuit. They were Tweeter=3.9ohm, mid=7.3ohm, and woofer=6.8ohm.

Here are some pics.

IMG_3005.JPG IMG_3008.JPG IMG_3009.JPG IMG_3010.JPG
 
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I'm going to be looking at the design of this cross-over. I'm puzzled by the capacitor values for these first order filters. Only 2uF for the tweeter? The cross-over frequency must be super high for that. I can't believe that is right. I have some measurement software and a calibrated microphone. I can measure them, but the actual values of the caps have drifted so far I doubt that I would be measuring what Fisher intended. I might have to create a post in the speaker section to get some support.
 
Tim; In all of the FISHER consoles and speakers I've seen the most common value for the tweeter is 4uf. And mid is anywhere from 2uf to 25uf depending on application. The high values are more common in consoles. The 2uf for the mid is normally in standalone's. So the sheet is wrong or the kit builder had dyslexia?!?????
 
Larry,

The cap values weren't printed on the sheet - they were printed on the caps. I'll get better pics of the caps in the cross-over. Hopefully, I can get others to agree that what I have here is actually those cap values.

If I plug in the DCR and capacitance into cross-over calculators I get the following high cross-over frequency numbers. Wish I had a Fisher schematic for the KS-2 to validate that these cap values are what Fisher intended.

Tweeter - 2uF that would make the high-pass cross-over frequency unreasonably high at around 20,000 Hz based on the tweeter having a DCR (approx. impedance) of around 4 ohm
Midrange - 4uF that would make the high-pass cross-over frequency at around 11,000 Hz based on the midrange having a DCR of around 7.3 ohm. (This isn't accurate though because there is a resistor and choke in series with the cap as part of the band-pass, but it gives you a flavor for the confusion I'm having.)

I'm hand-drawing the schematic from values printed on the parts and some measurements. The caps sure seem to say that they are 2uF 50V and 4uF 50V. I just think these are wayyyyyy too small for normal crossover frequencies... I would have expected the midrange to be band pass on the order of 2 to 4KHz and the tweeter to cross at somewhere around 4KHz, but that's just a wild a%% guess.
 
Ok. My bad. I have the caps reversed in my mind and on the diagram.

Tweeter - 4uF
Midrange - 2uF

It's funny, but the diagram on the board looks like it was printed on a brown paper bag and then cut out with scissors as a kind of guide for assembling the cross-over. Sadly, while each part is labeled, the diagram does not include any values. I'll prepare the order the replacement caps and pots. I'll need to take one of the pots out to see the shaft style and to determine if it is linear or audio taper.

IMG_3013.JPG IMG_3014.JPG IMG_3015.JPG IMG_3016.JPG
 
Here's a schematic for the Fisher KS-2 Speaker Crossover. I'm not an artist. Sorry.


IMG.jpg
 
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I'd just love if anyone had any documentation on the assembly of the KS-2 (or KS-1). I'd love to hear from anyone that has come across either speaker too.
 
Starting to take it apart to see what needs to be done.

- With a little de-oxit, I think the pot is now ok.

- I have to get some clamps to pull the corners together.

- Need order new caps.

- I've taken the drivers out. The woofer seems to have a cloth surround. With AR's and KLH's we use cloth surround sealant. I'm wondering if these should get that same treatment? That implies though that the boxes should be substantially sealed and the design is pretty sloppy for that. It's going to take some attention to detail to seal the entire speaker - that is if this is truely supposed to be an acoustic suspension model that should get that treatment.

- Also found on the cross-over that I'd mislabeled the L1 and L2. I've corrected that on this latest diagram. Not a big deal, but for the record it is nice to have it as intended.

IMG.jpg IMG_3030.JPG IMG_3031.JPG IMG_3032.JPG IMG_3033.JPG IMG_3034.JPG
 
Disassembled the cabinet. Both the front and back panels are only held on with screws. Each driver is only held by 4 screws/nuts. The first one was broken down to only the 4 sides. It is solidly glued together. I'll have to break apart those miter joints because they are just not fitting together. They'll have to be completely broken down to their individual parts and new gussets glued in once we have a good miter fit on the corners. I'll get some corner clamps to hold them together squarely when the get glued back together.

these 4 sides are not veneered. They are solid wood. I think it's pine, but I'll look a little closer. The stained exterior was convincing that it was walnut veneer when not closely inspected.
 
Found a reference to the KS-1 construction in the 1963 Fisher "The Handbook". It came in Birch and Scandinavian Walnut. I'm guessing that the KS-2 was similar. I think this set of KS-2's might be Birch, but someone put some walnut stain on it. I'll be stripping that stain and starting over.

I've pulled apart one of the cabinets and broken it down to the 4 sides, front panel and back panel. I now know why the miter joints weren't meeting - the sides have some cupping. I'm looking at ways to get rid of the cupping without planing it. Seems I've got two choices. (1) Steam with clamps on the concave side to get that side to expand or (2) carefully use a heat gun on the convex side to shrink the crown. I'm thinking to try the heat gun first.

In taking the joints apart, I had to use my vibrating cutter to cut off the gussets, then it came apart pretty easily. One joint was a bit stubborn, but with some wiggling it came apart. It's got an unfamiliar glue on these joints. Not quiet rubber cement and not quite white wood glue. This might be hide glue, but I can't be certain as I don't have any experience with that kind of glue. Trying to sand that glue off and it is stubborn.
 
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