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Fried Signature A/2 speakers

A

alandro

Alandro
I picked up a pair of these at the Goodwill yesterday on 25% off day here in Chicago. They're in remarkably good cosmetic shape. They need new surrounds on the woofers as is to be expected.

Also, one of them has it's protection circuitry button pushed all the way in, which I obviously will have to check out. I haven't hooked them up, so I do have a concern that there might have been a problem on that speaker and that repeated efforts were made to reset it. So I hope nothing is "fried" on that one.

Anyway with the discount they cost me 12 bucks. I looked around here and didn't find a whole lot about these or about the Fried line in general. I remember the name from years ago and I believe they were typically positively reviewed by the people at Absolute Sound, Stereophile and a few other high end publications. But if anybody hereabouts has any feedback on these I would be much obliged to hear it.

I'll add a couple of photos directly. Thanks in advance.
 
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OK...here are a few pics of one of the boxes. They both look pretty much the same, but for the pushed-in red protection circuit reset button that should be coming out of the little hole above the serial number.

So...anybody who has anything on these, or any vintage Fried speakers and might provide some info, it would be much appreciated.
 

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I need a tweeter.

OK...pulled out the woofers and did some cleaning up of all the crossovers. There were two spools of wire that had fallen off the crossover board on both speakers and I re-glued them back on. Also the protection circuit reset button on one which is also just glued on, was pushed into the enclosure and I re-glued that on as well.

One side sounded pretty dull, so I disconnected the woofers and ab'd the tweeters. One is fine. The other sounds "muted". I've never run into this before...my experience is typically that it's either working or dead. There is some output but it's very much muted compared with the other. In my primitive troubleshooting, I just switched the tweeters. The good one sounds good in both boxes, the dull one sound dull in both.

So I'm assuming it's not anything in the circuitry and that I need to find a new tweeter.

I've looked around a bit on the web and not really been able to come up with much at this point. So...does anybody have any resources for a good place to find one of these. The A/2 and A/3 tweeters, visually look identical to me, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, if anybody has a direction for me to go in to find a tweeter, I'd be much obliged. Thanks in advance.
 
alandro said:
I've looked around a bit on the web and not really been able to come up with much at this point. So...does anybody have any resources for a good place to find one of these. The A/2 and A/3 tweeters, visually look identical to me, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, if anybody has a direction for me to go in to find a tweeter, I'd be much obliged. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Most of the drivers the company used were custom made.

It is going to be extremely difficult to find suitable replacements to work with the existing crossover.

Do the tweeters have model numbers on the back?

Phase Technology and United States Speaker Systems formerly of Florida made some of the drivers for the company.
 
I was finally able to track them down. There was a listing on eBay earlier this month. They appear to have been made by Phase Technology in the 80's for their model PC70 speaker and were apparently sold to Fried for the A/2, A/3 and possibly other models as well. The guy pulled the listing but I messaged him and we'll see what happens.
 
I was given a set of those tweeter several years ago. I found out right away that they are not very efficient. They have good response but they need to be matched to a driver that also had lower output. I had some 8" drivers from a tower that had 1.5" voice coils and I used a simple choke cap crossover and put them in a old set of Marantz boxes. Now they are matched perfect and they sound good. I had pretty much given up on them as it is easy to lower the volume of a tweeter but you can't make it louder. I would not buy one and expect it to match. Get a pair or use a different tweeter.
Ed
 
EddyR said:
I was given a set of those tweeter several years ago. I found out right away that they are not very efficient. They have good response but they need to be matched to a driver that also had lower output. I had some 8" drivers from a tower that had 1.5" voice coils and I used a simple choke cap crossover and put them in a old set of Marantz boxes. Now they are matched perfect and they sound good. I had pretty much given up on them as it is easy to lower the volume of a tweeter but you can't make it louder. I would not buy one and expect it to match. Get a pair or use a different tweeter.
Ed
Click to expand...

Thanks Ed. The guy had a pair that went unsold on eBay. I'm hoping he still has the pair. The price seemed reasonable to me...he had an opening bid of 20 bucks and like 8 or 9 bucks shipping. I'm waiting to hear back from him, but I'm hopeful. And thanks for the link.
 
I.M. Fried didn't use the Hiquphon 2092Fs in the lower priced models like the A-2.

The Hiquphons were only used in the TOTL models.
 
Hate to crash this thread, but I'm looking for a schematic for the Fried C3L. PM me if you can help. Thx.

BTW, that Fried site link in post #4 is pretty worthless. Seems no matter what model you click on, you come to a dead end. Looks like all of the Fried speaker info has been removed.
 
spkrdtr said:
BTW, that Fried site link in post #4 is pretty worthless. Seems no matter what model you click on, you come to a dead end. Looks like all of the Fried speaker info has been removed.
Click to expand...

Ouch. That information was in place as of a couple months ago. Wonder what happened?
 
spkrdtr said:
Hate to crash this thread, but I'm looking for a schematic for the Fried C3L. PM me if you can help. Thx.

BTW, that Fried site link in post #4 is pretty worthless. Seems no matter what model you click on, you come to a dead end. Looks like all of the Fried speaker info has been removed.
Click to expand...

I see the links are dead now.

There were several versions of the crossover for the C3L model.
It depends on which version of the Carboneau 6.5" driver were used.
 
Urizen said:
The Q series used them:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43296
Click to expand...

From the photos in the above link, the tweeter looks identical to the Phase Tech tweeter in the A/2's I recently picked up. The photos I've seen of the Hiquphons don't look anything like the tweeters in the Q/3's. Although a photo obviously doesn't always tell the whole story.

Anyway...I keep calling them Phase Tech as that is how the seller of the pair on eBay identified them...and that they came out of a pair of Phase Technology PC70 speakers. The seller says they were patented by a guy named Bill Hecht, who died a little less than a year ago and was the founder of Phase Technology. Hecht was, according to the death notice in Stereophile, the inventor of the soft-dome tweeter, back in 1962.
I do have a question though...what does the knob on the Q/3 do?
 
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Urizen said:
The Q series used them:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43296
Click to expand...

The only way to know for sure which tweeters were in the Q3 Urizen would be to take them out and see.

All of the Hiquphon tweeters have holes in the back to directly solder the wire to the voice coil leads. They have no terminal posts like most of the brands of tweeters on the market.

http://www.hiquphon.eu/terminal_how_to_connect.html

All of the Q and A models that I saw and listened to did not use the Hiquphon tweeters.

The Hiquphon tweeters I.M. Fried used have a 92mm faceplate.
The Hiquphon tweeters are an improved Scan Speak 2008 which he previously used before Mr.Wroending founded the company after leaving Scan Speak.

Enclosed is a picture of one of my pairs of the Hiquphon 2092Fs tweeter.
Another picture of the front of the tweeter that may be purchased from Ellis Audio.

http://www.ellisaudio.com/OW2Fried.jpg
 

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Got 'em.

I was able to secure tweeters on eBay this morning. I bought both, just to make sure they match up...although I probably didn't need to. But the price seemed pretty reasonable and I suppose you never know when you might fry a tweeter. If anybody's interested, here's the link to the listing. Hopefully this eBay link in this forum isn't some sort of board violation as I'm doing it only as part of the discussion.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PHASE-TECH-...pmCJRmDY%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc#ht_391wt_937

These should work fine...the patent and part numbers are identical to the numbers on the tweeters in the Fried A/2's.
 
One last post to this thread. I installed the new tweeters this morning and fired them up. Even with completely obliterated woofer surrounds, these speakers sound excellent. When I get the new surrounds in, it may finally be time to put the old Advents with the masonite ring, up for sale on eBay.
 
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