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Mystery "Orion" Speaker.

Vintageman1

Vintageman1

Well-Known Member
I picked these little speakers up a few months ago at a second hand store . They were included with a small Pioneer SX 434.
I can find no usefull info on these speakers or the company that made them.
What I do know is they are made in Hungary. They have sat on my bench since that time as I thought there might be something special inside given the total weight of the cabinets. Today I decided to take a peek inside and this is what I found. The driver looks to be a 4" full range unit with a whizzer cone with rubber surround. As you can see, the magnet structure is huge and heavy for such a small unit. The only markings on this speaker is the code E932. There is no manufacturers name. The cabinets look to be solid teak or a teak ply. These will not take much to refinish.
As of this time, I have only hooked them up briefly to see if they worked and they seem fine. I plan on cleaning them up just as a fun project and when I am done, I will give them a good listen.
Does anyone have any further info on these speakers or at least give their impression of what I may have here? Thanks in advance,,,,,,Dave
 

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Yes, I am wondering whether I have a poor man's Fostex here. The speakers will obviously lack a bottom end but I have heard good things about running these small full range units. Lack of a crossover enters into this. Open to ideas!
 
Decent looking drivers you've got there. If I had to predict the sound, I'd bet they are a little lacking on the low end but probably have nice mids and decent highs. If you were interested in pursuing a design with them if they show enough potential, if you can find someone near you with the capabilities to do some testing, it might be worth the effort. If they are relatively efficient and have a nice low Qts, they might be real nice candidates for a back loaded horn.
 
I see you are from chatham, not a bad drive from a guy I know in Marine City, MI who has a woofer tester.
 
My guess would be about 30 minutes if Marine City is the place I'm thinking of.
That's the place just a Ferry ride across from Whampole Island Ontario isn't it?
 
Gotcha! It's times like this that I wish I had established decent wood working skills!
However, might be something I can do in rough as a test to see if a project like this could be plausible.
 
If you decide to pursue it and the measurements work out, we can try to work out a design. The nice thing about most of the back loaded horns is that while making them isn't extremely simple, most of the wood needed will be the same width so you can home depot or lowes to cut out equal sized strips and use smaller tools to cut the right lengths..
 
Definitely keep that in mind!!! Just for a bit of education, what does a "woofer tester" actually do and what is the process. I am never too old to learn these things.
 
It measures the thiele small parameters of a driver. You may have run across specs like fs, qts, qtc, qms, vas, while looking up speaker information. These numbers are used to predict speaker performance, primarily the low end frequency performance and optimize designs. With these specs, we can determine if the driver is best suited for a particular type of enclosure (sealed, ported, transmission line, horn loaded, etc)
 
Thankyou dnewma04. I have noted those abreviations before. I have never really entered the world of speaker making therefore just relied on the specs of the manufacturers of "ready made" units. I have been around enough to know you just can't stuff speakers into a box and throw in just any crossover and expect it to sing.
But that's about where my knowledge ends.
These drivers were in a sealed cabinet but who really knows whether "Orion" did the math and optimized them to their potential.
 
I think that Videoton and Hungaroton were names that Hungarian speakers were sold under and you might have luck googling them.
 
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