Teledyne/Olsen-Utah? Say what?!

Odd 12" coax driver I got here.

Labeled as Teledyne/Olsen (model SS-285), but made by Utah (328 code and orange basket both dead-give-aways).

Had to do a little cone patching at the edge and surround re-glueing... but it all works. Seems pretty nice. Thinking of trying it in my orphan Karlson cabinet...

Anyone seen one of these... or even better, GOT one of these, and wants another one??

Regards,
Gordon.

Haven't seen one in a long time.

Does the tweeter have a cast aluminum phase plug with 4 round holes in it covering a phenolic diaphram?

Sounds right. Phenolic diaphragm, definitely.

Regards,
Gordon.

That tweeter looks a lot like a pair of Olson tweeters I bought off the bay recently. They sounded pretty good, too.

Utah was one of the earliest speaker manufacturers in the US and was one of the major OEM suppliers as well up through the 1960's. Compared to competitors E-V and Jensen the Utah equivalents usually weren't designed or constructed as well, and most importantly didn't sound as good either. Utah drivers show up all the time on ebay, but usually there is little or no demand unless they are a model designed for vintage guitar amps which are still considered desireable.

The first supposed hi-fi speakers I ever owned back in the late 1960's were a pair of Utah 8 inch full range drivers with aluminum dust caps and cloth accordian surrounds (mostly untreated) mounted in homemade plywood boxes. They sounded like crap even when new and when the surrounds got dry and started cracking in the 1970's they were thrown out. About the same time my neighbor acquired some JBL speakers with 8 inch full range drivers that sounded quite good in comparison, but I still preferred a good two way system.

Recently I acquired a 1960's vintage Utah 4 inch full range speaker that has amazing high frequency extension compared to Foster equivalents from the same time period. What is sad about the Utah driver is that the normal resting cone position is near the bottom extension of the cloth surround, so the driver can't play very loud or put out any bass without bottoming out the surround. The cone can move freely outwards (forward) from its resting position a good 3/8 of an inch, while free rearward movement is barely 1/16th inch! The sound of the driver shows other design factors apart from the surround issue were well executed, but overall they still blew it. Its no wonder the company disappeared long ago......

I have a pair of 12" single driver utahs that look similar (especially the surrounds) bur not a coax...

Teledyne was a fascinating company, seemingly hovering all about various HiFi endeavours (Olsen, AR, Packard Bell, ???) - I have a nice Teledyne/Packard Bell quad receiver that is an obvious relative of the Dokorder 800x. The service manual indicates that it could be bought as part of an overall system that also included the speakers...but I don't have them.

Actually, Utah became Pyle Industries. So, technically, they're STILL around now. In the '70s and '80s, they made fairly serious gear... including all the woofers for Gallien-Krueger guitar and bass amps, among other things.

However, Pyle, after being bought by Harman in the early '90s, was sold to a far eastern concern... it's part of the same company as Lanzar and such, now. At least, that was true at the last time I checked...

Regards,
Gordon.

I had a pair of those same Utah coaxes back in 19and73, I put them in 2 cubic foot sealed boxes. I liked them.

The Realistic/Utah "Americana"

I didn't like the cone tweeters, and just used the woofer full-range with different tweeters on top of the cabinets.

I liked them, but now I like my B&C 12" dual concentric speakers better.