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How bad do white van speakers sound?

MRX37

MRX37

Super Member
I've heard alot about the white van scam and how the speakers are junk and how they sound like crap, but I haven't heard many details on exactly how they sound. Usually I hear things like "Sounds like a clock radio"... Okay... some clock radios sound okay and some don't...


I have a pair of 12 inch Acoustic Monitor woofers. They have translucent plastic cones. I got them out of a pair of Acoustic Monitor cabinets that were literally falling apart. I put them into some good cabinets that already had mids and tweets in them, and they sound all right. I wouldn't crank them due to the woofers having small magnets and voice coils, but they don't sound bad.

Has anybody ever run across a pair of these speakers while they were playing? If so, what did they sound like? Did they sound too boomy? Too shrill? Cabinet resonence? Muddy sounding? Lack of mid or high frequencies?

I'm just curious as to how bad they really are.
 
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My son bought some white vanners before we knew any better.

They were reasonably ok to be honest. Not overly detailed maybe (a drum beat was just a beat, not the sound of a stretched membrane thwacked by a stick).

But yeh, worth the $50 bucks or so
 
A couple of years ago, a German hifi-magazine bought a pair of white van speakers. They put in a decent crossover, braced the cabinet, put in some stuffing etc. and then compared to the cheapest, smalles Mission loudspeakers they could find. The small Mission's ate the modified white van speakers for breakfast.... ;)
 
is 'white van' a generic name for some speakers or what? I'v never seen any in stores or anywhere else for that matter. Who makes them? Who sells them?
Are they a regional brand, Eastern? Lotta negative about them. How do you tell if spkers are 'white van'. By the brand name or what?
 
I'm still looking around trying to get a pair of them dirt cheap.. hoping a pair will show up at my local thrift so I can: A) give an honest review of them, and B) find out what a few hundred to 1000 honest watts will do to them... I'm hoping to see some smoke from cones :yes:
 
Wigwam Jones said:
Like a crate of donkeys falling down a staircase.
Click to expand...

Puts me in mind of Douglas Adams' 'Dirk Gently' novels. Only, that was a horse, IIRC (or was it a couch? Can't quite recall. :) ).

I like Toasted Almond's typical description of stuff like this: "sounds like a bag of cats".

Or, one I like to say myself: "the tweeters in these white van speakers frequently sound like a disk brake raping a smoke alarm". Stole that description from a Usenet review of some trendy singer sometime in the early '90s... :D

Regards,
Gordon.
 
Been there done that - Acoustic Monitor PSM-1250. Thought I could do something to upgrade/hot rod. Did all I could. Braced cab, extended the ports to 7", stripped out the network of cheap coupling caps and installed sale ($17) Dayton X-Overs (biggest change for the good), and finally changed the woofers for some Pioneers with better specs. Lot of work and it basically went no where. Tried 3 woofs, 4 different tweets from my spares pile and two different mids too. Ended up with the stock mids and tweets, some resistors to tame the balance issues and all. They sound OK in a teenage head-banger sort of way. They are going to nephew for Christmas as he likes "dark" music and has noting to compare with :)

Test was taking in the house and comparing to ANY of the Infinity's or the EPI 100's and they suffer badly in comparo :(
 
I think that's the general consensus - they sound fine if you replace the speakers, the crossovers, and the cabs.

I guess you could keep the grills if they really flip your levers.
 
similost said:
I'm still looking around trying to get a pair of them dirt cheap.. hoping a pair will show up at my local thrift so I can: A) give an honest review of them, and B) find out what a few hundred to 1000 honest watts will do to them... I'm hoping to see some smoke from cones :yes:
Click to expand...

Like this? Put a Gumby doll in the pic, you have a new avatar.

je
 

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