Audiophile Speaker Panel of unknown origin - All Polydax. SOLVED: Fuselier Model 9

I picked these up the other night. I don't use the term audiophile often, but I think it may apply here.

The panels themselves are 34" wide, 44" tall and 1.5" deep. Maybe 60-75 pounds. Nice grills for both the front and the back. They sort of "sandwich" the panel and give it a very clean, Danish look.

Still don't know who the manufacture is. When I first saw them with the grills on, I thought they may be the top panels from of a Watson Laboratories Model Seven. Once I got a look at the inside, I knew that was not the case.

Many, many pictures to follow. Not a single label, name, badge, scribble ANYWHERE! I would think someone would be proud of these. I only used 1 panel for the pictures. Panel 2, other than being mirror-imaged, is constructed exactly the same.

OK, here we go:

Front panel in all it's glory. That's a lot of Polydax! Staggered baffle would indicate some attention to time-alignment. The bases are pretty shot but they do seem be constructed to lean back a bit also.


Closer look at the bass drivers. They are ~8 inchers and are wired in series - 2 to a group. Pretty sure these are Bextrene drivers.


A little closer up


Now the mids, or mid-bass.. not sure. They are right at 5 inches


And again, a bit closer.

Here is the top-end. A dome and the famous TW8B titanium tweeter


Better shot at the dome. Unfortunately, the dome on each panel measures open. These are the only drivers that have a problem that I have found so far.


And here is the front of the TW8B


Did I mention Open-Baffle design??


And dual banana plugs. I plugged into the lower set and got output from only the bass drivers. Plug into the upper set and get output from all drivers (well, except the blown domes of course)

Shot of most of the crossover. Those are the bottom 2 bass drivers on the right. Notice another part of the crossover on the far right? Looks to be another inductor and a resistor. A picture later shows there may be some heat related damage to the resistor.


Backs of the upper 2 bass drivers and the 2 mid-bass or midrange... not sure how they are being used.


And the backs of the high end drivers


I guess this is a transformer and two large 200uf, 100v caps.


Lastly a little closer view of the main part of the crossover. Bunches of poly caps, inductors and resistors. Notice the fuse on the far left is partially out of it's holder. The fuse was missing on both panels. I put one in to see if that's why I wasn't getting output from the dome - thinking this may be protecting it. Unfortunately, that was not the case. This is when I put a meter on the domes to determine that they were indeed open. Since I am not sure what role the fuse plays, I left it gapped so it will not pass anything.

Another shot of the crossover


Looks like there may have been is a heat-related problem with this resistor. I haven't checked it's value yet.


Back of one of the bass drivers


Ditto


And a third view. No markings on and of the bass the magnet. Only a single stamp on the frame that reads "0179"

Rear shot of the tweeter


Rear shot of the dome. Too bad they are toast


Rear of one of the mid-bass/midrange


Second one


And lastly view from the side. This panel had, by far, the best wooden bass. The other one is almost completely disintegrated. Not sure what I am going to use to replace these. The original is particle board. I'm thinking they deserve a bit better than that!

From the side so you can see the back


Now side-view with the grills on. See what I mean about the grills "sandwiching" the panel?


Front view. I think they are quite attractive.


Top view. Nice display of the wood contrasting against the light grill cloth. Bet that wood will look amazing after a few coats of Danish Oil


And one last shot from the side.



So that's it for pictures. Would love to hear comments about who you think may have made these gems.

If they are DIY, I think it may have been a kit. The woodworking is exacting and duplicated across each panel.

So how did they sound?? Hard to say. I was listening to 1 panel at a time and remember that there is a big hole where the dome should be contributing. Also, I could not really do much with placement or positioning. I was in the garage and NO WAY is the wife going to let me drag those things into the house since the bases are shedding particle board left and right. Once I replace the bases and do something about the domes, I think I can get them into a controlled environment for a fair audition.

My guess is they are going to sound amazing!

^^^Don't understand the place holder thing.^^^

Speaker looks extremely intriguing. Are those black drivers bextrene?

How do they sound? Sure they are not DIY? That quarter round molding around the tweet and super tweet look kinda DIY to me.

They sure look nice!

I am sure I have seen these before, the wings are the key for me.

Valveglow said:

^^^Don't understand the place holder thing.^^^

Speaker looks extremely intriguing. Are those black drivers bextrene?

Click to expand...

Wanted to get all the pics in before folks started commenting is all.

My thought is they are Bextrene also. Not positive however.

halo71 said:

Sure they are not DIY? That quarter round molding around the tweet and super tweet look kinda DIY to me.

They sure look nice!

Click to expand...

Nope. Not sure of ANYTHING at this point. If it's DIY, they were pretty darn good. The attention to detail is impressive.

They are beautiful with the grilles both on and off!

Love the look. Would be interested to hear those open baffle beauties.

Sent from my Nexus Device using my thumbs.

They sure look impressive! How do they sound?

halo71 said:

They sure look impressive! How do they sound?

Click to expand...

Hard to tell so far. See the end of post #6 reasons why.

They are nice to look at. I am impressed more and more as I notice various details.

The board with the burnt resistor looks very out of place, even with the same style of inductor. The color of it and the fact that's it's much bigger than needed.

You should measure the OD of the magnets on the woofers and the domes. Audax had a lot of different variations of the same drivers, they simply had bigger motors, longer windings. I have all the factory specs for the TW8B and your lower midranges, if you need. Pretty sure i can find the model # of your woofers and domes :yes:.
Those are keepers, that's for sure!. BTW, the fact that they aligned the air cores so they don't interfere is sign of quality and/or a not so vintage build.

I'll get the magnet measurements and post tomorrow. Thanks for the help turboyam!

The larger mids are Bextrene for sure. Used to get those from Just Speakers up in SF. I may have the Audax raw driver book stashed somewhere, will have to look.

Very interesting speakers for sure.


John

ivandezande said:

The board with the burnt resistor looks very out of place, even with the same style of inductor. The color of it and the fact that's it's much bigger than needed.

Click to expand...

Interesting catch. Once you got me looking at it closer, I noticed this: All the crimp connections to the main crossover board are the same except for the 2. Those are the 2 that jump over to the out-of-place board that has the single inductor and resistor. It's almost like at some point, someone decided the crossover needed to be changed so they added the other board.