Now SOLD. Thanks
Find it here on ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mission-737R-Renaissance-Mid-Bass-Speaker-Driver-Loudspeaker-/291424807115?hash=item43da45a8cb
Showing posts with label 737R. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 737R. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 April 2015
Thursday, 8 January 2015
FRANKENKEILIDHS - Zombie Speakers Rise Up: PART 5
PART 1 here
PART 2 here
PART 3 here
PART 4 here
All 4 mid-bass drivers were installed very quickly. Laying the Keilidhs on their backs makes access to the internals and installing the drivers very quick.
Now to the choice of tweeters. As in the picture below, the tweeter mounting plates look like a similar diameter. However, seen from the side they're very different. The 737R driver (on the left) is essentially flat with the magnet protruding a small amount to the rear. The 782 driver (on the right) has an essentially flat back panel with the chassis and magnet protruding forward - creating a very shallow horn shape.
I don't have the tools, nor the confidence to think about routing the baffle nor to machine down the tweeter backplates nor faceplates. So the 782 option almost excluded itsself immediately because the backplate is too big to fit into the recess in the baffle, but the smaller front protruding section is not deep enough to pass through from the back of the panel and be flush with the front.
However, I did want to give both options a listen, just to be sure it wasn't going to be worth the effort of finding another way.
To get the 737R tweeter to fit, a small part of the baffle opening had to be made slightly larger to allow for the terminals to sit inside the opening. Given this wasn't going to prevent the fitting of standard tweeters again at some point in the future, the powerfile came out and some MDF dust was created. Although the mid-bass drivers are bolted in at the moment, the tweeters need mountings that are different to the originals, so are blu-tacked in place at this point, making sure the ring of blu-tac is complete to ensure a seal.
At this point, all the drivers came out again to be able to install the internal wadding. From converstaions, it seems the Keilidh was filled with polyester wadding. However, it seems somewhat harder to find out how dense this should be packed. The internal bracing in the cabinet is very solid just below the lower mid-bass driver. It has 4 small holes in it, but I'm not sure if this should be packed with wadding or not. I choose, at this point, not to fill this cavity, thinking that if the bass doesn't sound right, I can add some into there later, whereas extracting it again looks like it would be hard work.
So, polyester filling? Where to get that from? Quick chat with Mrs Musings and it seems that cheap pillows are filled with the stuff. That's lucky as we have some of those in the garage - they've been used for packing stuff in the boot of the car, in trailers etc. to protect items in transit. Scissors into action and 3 pillows are soon emptied of their filling.
I choose to pack the material quite tightly, remembering to feed the cables through before they get lost in amongst the wadding.
Crossovers and first listening in the next part.
PART 2 here
PART 3 here
PART 4 here
Driver installation time.
70W max it says on the back of the CRB-165PS drivers. The spec says 35W RMS. Enough to get a decent volume without being a PA system. The chassis of these drivers is a perfect fit into the baffle cut-outs in the Keilidh. Even the holes are drilled in a perfectly aligned arrangement to allow bolt to go straight into the existing threaded bushes embedded in the cabinets.
The chassis of the driver is a very thin pressed steel (at least its not moulded plastic) which pings quite nicely when flicked. So I stuck some foam pads on the legs in the hope that one of those little tweaks might help the whole.
At this point, I was using "chocolate block" connectors to connect the cables inside the cabs to short links with spade terminals. This would allow for multiple fitting and removal without worrying about soldering - that could come later.
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| Rear of the mid-bass driver |
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| Front of the mid-bass driver. Note foam surround. The driver looks like its metal, but actually that's a very thin film of something shiney (not sure what though) on a core of polypropylene. |
It order to seal the drivers into the cabinets, gaskets are required. These were supplied by Wilmslow Audio. They're about 8mm thick before use. Once clamped into the cabinets, the drivers appear tightly mounted, then about an hour later another half a turn can be applied to the bolts. This goes on approximately another 6 times as the gasket compresses over time. The bolts are M4 threaded. I've chosen to use allen cap headed stainless steel bolts.
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| The uncompressed gasket in place on the back of the driver and held in place on the mounting bolts |
Now to the choice of tweeters. As in the picture below, the tweeter mounting plates look like a similar diameter. However, seen from the side they're very different. The 737R driver (on the left) is essentially flat with the magnet protruding a small amount to the rear. The 782 driver (on the right) has an essentially flat back panel with the chassis and magnet protruding forward - creating a very shallow horn shape.
 |
| Tweeter options |
I don't have the tools, nor the confidence to think about routing the baffle nor to machine down the tweeter backplates nor faceplates. So the 782 option almost excluded itsself immediately because the backplate is too big to fit into the recess in the baffle, but the smaller front protruding section is not deep enough to pass through from the back of the panel and be flush with the front.
However, I did want to give both options a listen, just to be sure it wasn't going to be worth the effort of finding another way.
To get the 737R tweeter to fit, a small part of the baffle opening had to be made slightly larger to allow for the terminals to sit inside the opening. Given this wasn't going to prevent the fitting of standard tweeters again at some point in the future, the powerfile came out and some MDF dust was created. Although the mid-bass drivers are bolted in at the moment, the tweeters need mountings that are different to the originals, so are blu-tacked in place at this point, making sure the ring of blu-tac is complete to ensure a seal.
 |
| Laying on their backs, installing the drivers was straightforward |
 |
| Here the 737R tweeter is sitting slightly proud of the baffle, but not significantly so |
 |
| Looking a bit more like a speaker again |
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| Here the 782 tweeter is loosely installed (even by blu-tack standards!), clearly showing a poor alignment compared to the baffle. To achieve time algnment, tweeters are usually mounted further back than mid-bass drivers, so this wasn't going to go well. |
 |
| 782 tweeter from the front view |
At this point, all the drivers came out again to be able to install the internal wadding. From converstaions, it seems the Keilidh was filled with polyester wadding. However, it seems somewhat harder to find out how dense this should be packed. The internal bracing in the cabinet is very solid just below the lower mid-bass driver. It has 4 small holes in it, but I'm not sure if this should be packed with wadding or not. I choose, at this point, not to fill this cavity, thinking that if the bass doesn't sound right, I can add some into there later, whereas extracting it again looks like it would be hard work.
So, polyester filling? Where to get that from? Quick chat with Mrs Musings and it seems that cheap pillows are filled with the stuff. That's lucky as we have some of those in the garage - they've been used for packing stuff in the boot of the car, in trailers etc. to protect items in transit. Scissors into action and 3 pillows are soon emptied of their filling.
I choose to pack the material quite tightly, remembering to feed the cables through before they get lost in amongst the wadding.
 |
| Here you can see the small areas filed out of the tweeter cut out |
 |
| Labelling the cables for each driver seemed like a good idea |
 |
| At this point the gaskets still rebound to a reasonable thickness when the drivers are removed. Within a few weeks they stay pretty much compressed when the drivers are removed. so continuous re-tightening seems to become unnecessary. |
Crossovers and first listening in the next part.
FRANKENKEILIDHS - Zombie Speakers Rise Up: PART 3
PART 1 here
PART 2 here
The starting point, a set of cabinets in very good condition, but kinda missing tweeters, mid-bass drivers, wadding, crossovers, terminals and any sense of self esteem:
So I started with tweeters - and already there is some doubt over how to calculate the budget for this build, as I attempt to keep track of the spend. I have decided the following (possibly dubious) rules:
- I only include the cost of what goes into the final version
- Parts tried along the way can be sold on or used in other projects, so are not included in the total
- Where I've used parts which are components of some other product or project, I've allocated a nominal value to them, based on a vague recollection of what I paid for the complete product
- Labour is not included, otherwise I'd be looking to buy a brand new pair of M140s or something...
Here were my choices of tweeters. Why Mission? Well, I have some lying around in the workshop, there's loads of them about and they sell at very reasonable prices. The left hand flat faceplate driver looks very similar to other Linn drivers from earlier designs such as Isobariks and early Kabers. But they also look very similar to a million other soft dome tweeters out there and probably originate from a limited number of manufacturing plants, regardless of the branding on the product. Of course, there will be many subtle variations in design, materials and sonic outcome. This particular pair are from a pair of Mission 737R speakers from the 1980s. Sourced from a pair I had that suffered a little too much from aging cabinet glue and the mid-bass drivers having brittle rubber surrounds. So I paid about £45 for those originally, breaking them after about 3 years of ownership. Let's call it £15 the pair.
At the time I was looking into this, a pair of much more recent Mission 782 tweeters came up on ebay and I picked those up for £18. As it happens, later testing revealled suprisingly little difference in the performance of these drivers - the 737R driver sounding a little more enthusiastic, the 782 smoother and more cultured, but these were very slight differences.
At £15 and £18 a pair, both options look like they're going to be within the budget.
Here they are in the original homes:
PART 2 here
The starting point, a set of cabinets in very good condition, but kinda missing tweeters, mid-bass drivers, wadding, crossovers, terminals and any sense of self esteem:
 |
| Empty cabs - no drivers, crossover, wadding, terminals nor bases |
 |
| Inside, Linn fitted these "Kustone" blocks which are said to help with absorbing internal reflections |
 |
| The Linn logo is moulded into these, but a bit tricky to see here |
 |
| Its a loosely packed set of granules, held together with adhesive. Water would probably pass through this material |
 |
| Here you can see some of the internal cross-bracing and the thickness of the MDF in use. These are suprisingly sturdy and well constructed boxes |
 |
| Further internal bracing - the flat board with small holes is horizontal and the larger hoop is in the vertical |
So I started with tweeters - and already there is some doubt over how to calculate the budget for this build, as I attempt to keep track of the spend. I have decided the following (possibly dubious) rules:
- I only include the cost of what goes into the final version
- Parts tried along the way can be sold on or used in other projects, so are not included in the total
- Where I've used parts which are components of some other product or project, I've allocated a nominal value to them, based on a vague recollection of what I paid for the complete product
- Labour is not included, otherwise I'd be looking to buy a brand new pair of M140s or something...
Here were my choices of tweeters. Why Mission? Well, I have some lying around in the workshop, there's loads of them about and they sell at very reasonable prices. The left hand flat faceplate driver looks very similar to other Linn drivers from earlier designs such as Isobariks and early Kabers. But they also look very similar to a million other soft dome tweeters out there and probably originate from a limited number of manufacturing plants, regardless of the branding on the product. Of course, there will be many subtle variations in design, materials and sonic outcome. This particular pair are from a pair of Mission 737R speakers from the 1980s. Sourced from a pair I had that suffered a little too much from aging cabinet glue and the mid-bass drivers having brittle rubber surrounds. So I paid about £45 for those originally, breaking them after about 3 years of ownership. Let's call it £15 the pair.
At the time I was looking into this, a pair of much more recent Mission 782 tweeters came up on ebay and I picked those up for £18. As it happens, later testing revealled suprisingly little difference in the performance of these drivers - the 737R driver sounding a little more enthusiastic, the 782 smoother and more cultured, but these were very slight differences.
At £15 and £18 a pair, both options look like they're going to be within the budget.
 |
| Tweeter options. 737R (1980s) and 782 (90s - 2000s). Front |
 |
| Rear views with the 737R at the top |
Here they are in the original homes:
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| Mission 737R |
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| Mission 782 |
Trial mounting these in the cabinets immediately gave the need for the use of a file (to provide clearance within the cabinet for terminals in the case of the 737R, some head scratching about the way the face plate is designed on the 782. Much use of blu-tack too. Mocking up stuff is a bit crude, rough and ready, but hopefully gives an approximation of the way stuff will work when finished from a sonic and physical perspective. I had a pair of old Linn tweeters in the workshop too, but there faceplate is huge and the magnets won't go through the hole in the Keilidh baffle. I don't have any wood routing equipment so major changes to the holes in the baffle were of the radar. This is my first real attempt at doing stuff with speakers, so I wanted to keep it as straightforward as possible.
Mid-bass drivers: the main challenge. Where to get something that will fit, and at the right price. I'm sure Monacor's drivers from the likes of Wilmslow are very good, but they're out of budget for this build. Pretty much nothing else fits in the size and power bracket. The size though, is common place in the car audio arena. But then they always seem to come coupled with a matching tweeter (and a not so sophisticated single capacitor crossover, in the main). So an ebay automated search was instigated and a couple of weeks went by.
The up popped something quite interesting from Monacor's CarPower branded speakers - a 165mm woofer, boxed, new old stock, no tweeters and 2 pairs available, model CRB-165PS. At a buy it now price of £25.95 a pair, worth a punt. Only 4 ohms per driver though - which is the standard in the car hifi world, but something which could present amplifiers with a load challenge. The cones on these are polypropylene, which might fit well with the tweeters, with the 737R also using that material in its mid-bass driver. The look like a metal cone, with their blingy sliver finish. With their 4ohms and 35W nominal power handling, they were always going to be a bit of a gamble. Manufacturer's details here.
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| The back of the Mancor CarPower mid-bass driver. The basket is very thin steel (in line with the price of the drivers) and I added some foam pads in an attempt to damp them a little. Pictures of the fronts come later. |
More on mid-bass drivers later!
The final component is the crossover. Another rake around in the workshop and I dug out some old Mission 773e terminal / crossover units. The Missions, like the Keilidhs, are a 2 way design with 3 drivers - again the mid-bass drivers doing identical work and arranged vertically above and below the tweeter. They look like this:
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| Mission 773e - similar to the Keilidh in concept, but newer, cheaper and a somewhat less well built cabinet. Decent sounding for their price though. Might be a good donator of a crossover. Or not. |
So what are these crossovers worth, when considering the budget? They're from a pair of 773 that I bought from ebay which were described as "immaculate". When they arrived, they'd clearly been stood in a puddle at some time and the side panels were separating from the base, with the wood de-laiminating in the way that MDF does. The cabs were good only for the wood recycling skip down at the local tip. Fortunately a full refund was paid immediately and the speakers weren't required to be returned. So I have 4 drive units, 2 tweeters and a pair of crossovers spare to help out with any problems I have with the pair we have in the dining room. I'm therefore going to count the crossover costs as £0. If you're not convinced by this logic, no worries, it all comes back to bite me later...
So the major components are selected, a few bits and pieces such as terminal posts have been sourced and build can commence.
Sunday, 29 May 2011
On A Mission
Local Naim enthusiast R has a new job, which is great news. Less great is that it involves staying away from his Naim system during the week, returning at weekends.
So that could be a real downer, but R decided that he needed something to listen to his music during the week in the digs. We dug out my portable kit and had a long natter about the best approach to take. Whilst we listened to some music via iPod Classic (320kbps AAC files) through the Trends Audio TA10.1 integrated amp and Tangent Evo speakers we agreed that it was a decent enough sound, given the size of the amp and speakers involved. The discussion then moved on to the "use case" and it became clear that a compact permanent system would fit the bill better than a truly portable system - R's not moving from hotel to hotel on a regular basis.
We thought about cost effective options for amps / integrated systems. We both have Denon DM compact systems (amp / CD / Tuner) for kitchen use and they're adequate for that role but not really something you'd want to sit in front of and do some actual listening. R has also heard an Arcam solo and was unimpressed, given the coverage its had in the press. Thoughts turn to eBay and what the options might be if we think about used kit. I really think the TA10.1 could do the job, but R obviously feels something more substantial is required. With both budget (Denon) and supposedly mid-range (Arcam Solo) integrated systems discounted on grounds of poor performance we moved towards integrated amps and the options there. Sources then come to mind and we soon agreed that CD isn't a good option (R would have to take them to and from home each week) and some kind of digital file playing source would be best. iPod? Well, files would be best re-rippped into lossless Apple format and storage would continue to be an issue. We've been discussing streaming options for some time and R has started ripping CDs to FLAC in anticipation of making a decision in that direction fairly soon - he's heard the Logitech Touch in action in my system and sees (and hears!) the benefits. Being a Naim advocate meant that the UnitiQute was a possible all-in-one option and it has sounded OK on the dealer's shop floor. But £1300 with speakers to add is a big chunk of cash to sink into a possibly temporary system and detracts from investment in the main home system.
So back to the amp. You can seem some stuff about Cyrus in the posts below - my brother runs all Cyrus electronics and my system is running a DAC-X / PSX-R with great results. There's one thing that Cyrus is famous for and that's their pretty much unique approach to putting all their kit into the same shoe-box size cases - somewhat more compact than the usual integrateds from other companies. I have a couple of Logitech Touches still in their boxes ready to go into the Dining Room and Kitchen. So a temporary source is worked out - plug a USB memory stick loaded with FLAC files into the back of the Touch and away you go. Of course, you won't get much music on a USB stick, but it would allow us to prove the point.
At the end of the first discussion, we have a plan - Touch, Cyrus amp and some speakers. Off R went, armed with a Touch and his eBay account for another week away.
News comes through mid-week that a Cyrus 8 has been secured on eBay at a very very good price (the silver ones seem to sell for a little less than the black ones), leaving the way clear for a bit of speaker experimentation at the following weekend.
R arrives on Friday night with said Cyrus, he's had the Touch up and running from a USB stick and there's a 2TB portable desktop drive waiting to receive lots of ripped CDs. One day (actually it might be a few days effort) I'll put a whole page up on the blog about some experimentation I went through with pre-year 2000 Mission speakers a couple of years ago, but for the purposes of this post, it means that I've a small collection of their speakers in the garage - the ones that came out best in my experiments and I felt would be good to hang on to, plus, there's a pair of 771e on Atacama SE20 stands doing great service in our Dining room. So we have some tiny Monitor Audios that R brings along, and then Mission 771e (turn of the millenium), 737R (late 1980s) and 773 (turn of the millenium) speakers to play with. The Cyrus 8 is placed on an Isolplat on top of a Quadraspire rack and my Logitech Touch (streaming FLAC from NAS over Ethernet) is hooked up using Linn Black analogue interconnects. R has brought some solid core speaker cables (I can't remember which - I'll amend the post later with the correct info) and we start with the tiny Monitor Audios. The set up isn't ideal - all the speakers are stood in my listening room in front of the Linn Keilidhs so its not the best way to listen. They're well into the room but they'll all be put through the same circumstances so we'll be able to spot differences but won't be hearing any of them at their best. We don't listen to the MAs for long - there's loads of detail, not much bass - but what is there is OK - and female vocals are very enjoyable. But its all rather bright / harsh and I don't think they sound as good as the Tangent Evos. We quickly move on to the 771e on the Atacama stands (which are 2/3 sand filled) and there is a massive jump in quality. There's a quite suprising amount of bass out of these boxes, the treble is smoothed out significantly and there's a good deal more drive to the music. We listen to some of our "standard" listening tracks such as Eagle Eye Cherry's "Shooting Up In Vain", Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters" in 24/96 format and FAC15's take on Judie Tzuke's classic "Stay With Me Til Dawn". We enjoy them all and agree that the 771e are very acceptable.
Mission 771e (identity info - 771 has a silver bass driver centre cap, the 771e has gold)
We carry them out (the stands are heavy!) and in come the floor standing 773 - they're no wider nor deeper than the 771 but they're 923mm tall so they sit the tweeter higher in the room. The 773 and 771 share the same drivers - a 25mm silk dome tweeter and a 130mm Aerogel bass cone, but the 773 adds a second bass driver. The results are astonishing. R's reaction forces some choice language - he can't believe we're listening to a pair of speakers you can pick up for under £100. They're great - bass is deep, extended and articulate, vocals clear and imaging is good, if not as good as Mission's best in this regard. We listen to several more tracks just to make sure. If you listen to them reasonably loud they do a great job, quieter they remain dynamic, but crank up the Cyrus too much (for the speakers, not the amp) they do harden up somewhat. But that won't matter - the quiet to medium volume range is all that will be possible in R's digs. We decide that this combination (even using the rather limited DAC built into the Logitech Touch) is a very acceptable system and one that would be easy to live with in terms of tonal qualities and information retrieval.
Mission 773
We move onto the last option we have available to us - the late 1980s Mission 737R. Read about them on the Internet and you'll see lots of references to the "legendary" 737 Renaissance (the R stands for Renaissance which is printed in large black letters on the old skool front baffle which is painted in a dark silver dimpled finish - think Hammerite!) which was an interesting re-positioning of the "legendary" original Mission 770. Imagine the original Mission 770's thin chipboard cabinet and the translucent 200mm polypropylene base cone coupled with the cheaper tweeter from the 700 and you get the 737R - a kind of down-market version of the 770. At that time, the 770 had moved onto a more sophisticated cabinet and bass driver so I'm guessing this was a good way for Mission to continue to re-coup its investment in the translucent bass cone. Anyway, I digress. The upshot is that, following on from the 15+ years younger 773, the 737R were are a major step backwards. Good to see that Mission did make good progress over those years. In comparison to the 773 the 737R just sounds so crude. Bass is lighter (they benefit from being back to a wall so are distincly disadvantaged here) but its also somewhat flappy, treble is vague, bright and splashy and vocals get buried somewhere in the mix. Pretty disappointing - they are working fine, but they're really showing their age in terms of the sound they make. I finally realise that I can let them go - they might have been quite something in their day, but they're heavily out classed now. Its good to hear that progress has been made.
Mission 737 Renaissance (note there are 2 versions of this speaker, one with a matt black baffle and the other with the dimpled silver finish - not sure which came first, but pretty sure from listening to them that they're otherwise of identical spec)
So we have a result - the 773 are a suprisingly good speaker, and R is off back to eBay to see what the 773 action is like. When buying the 77 series from this era secondhand you need to look for those that are in immaculate condition because the very attractive "leather look" black vinyl front baffle covering sometimes has given up gripping onto the heavily chamfered / countered front panel.
Post script: Having got the result we did with the 773, the 771 on Atacamas didn't go back into the Dining Room - the 773 have taken their place. With their backs closer to a wall the 773 are sounding better still, even when driven by a lowly NAD 7020e receiver (basically a NAD 3020e amp with a built-in tuner). A Logitech Touch is now resident in the Dining Room system too - its finally climbed out of its box. So the second system gets a boost out of this exercise too. R has borrowed the 771e and stands for a few weeks until a suitable pair off 773s appear on eBay. A useful couple of hours of experiment that's lead to 2 excellent results for R and for our Dining room. R's also taken away some Linn K20 speaker cable to compare against the solid core stuff - will report his findings soon.
So that could be a real downer, but R decided that he needed something to listen to his music during the week in the digs. We dug out my portable kit and had a long natter about the best approach to take. Whilst we listened to some music via iPod Classic (320kbps AAC files) through the Trends Audio TA10.1 integrated amp and Tangent Evo speakers we agreed that it was a decent enough sound, given the size of the amp and speakers involved. The discussion then moved on to the "use case" and it became clear that a compact permanent system would fit the bill better than a truly portable system - R's not moving from hotel to hotel on a regular basis.
We thought about cost effective options for amps / integrated systems. We both have Denon DM compact systems (amp / CD / Tuner) for kitchen use and they're adequate for that role but not really something you'd want to sit in front of and do some actual listening. R has also heard an Arcam solo and was unimpressed, given the coverage its had in the press. Thoughts turn to eBay and what the options might be if we think about used kit. I really think the TA10.1 could do the job, but R obviously feels something more substantial is required. With both budget (Denon) and supposedly mid-range (Arcam Solo) integrated systems discounted on grounds of poor performance we moved towards integrated amps and the options there. Sources then come to mind and we soon agreed that CD isn't a good option (R would have to take them to and from home each week) and some kind of digital file playing source would be best. iPod? Well, files would be best re-rippped into lossless Apple format and storage would continue to be an issue. We've been discussing streaming options for some time and R has started ripping CDs to FLAC in anticipation of making a decision in that direction fairly soon - he's heard the Logitech Touch in action in my system and sees (and hears!) the benefits. Being a Naim advocate meant that the UnitiQute was a possible all-in-one option and it has sounded OK on the dealer's shop floor. But £1300 with speakers to add is a big chunk of cash to sink into a possibly temporary system and detracts from investment in the main home system.
So back to the amp. You can seem some stuff about Cyrus in the posts below - my brother runs all Cyrus electronics and my system is running a DAC-X / PSX-R with great results. There's one thing that Cyrus is famous for and that's their pretty much unique approach to putting all their kit into the same shoe-box size cases - somewhat more compact than the usual integrateds from other companies. I have a couple of Logitech Touches still in their boxes ready to go into the Dining Room and Kitchen. So a temporary source is worked out - plug a USB memory stick loaded with FLAC files into the back of the Touch and away you go. Of course, you won't get much music on a USB stick, but it would allow us to prove the point.
At the end of the first discussion, we have a plan - Touch, Cyrus amp and some speakers. Off R went, armed with a Touch and his eBay account for another week away.
News comes through mid-week that a Cyrus 8 has been secured on eBay at a very very good price (the silver ones seem to sell for a little less than the black ones), leaving the way clear for a bit of speaker experimentation at the following weekend.
R arrives on Friday night with said Cyrus, he's had the Touch up and running from a USB stick and there's a 2TB portable desktop drive waiting to receive lots of ripped CDs. One day (actually it might be a few days effort) I'll put a whole page up on the blog about some experimentation I went through with pre-year 2000 Mission speakers a couple of years ago, but for the purposes of this post, it means that I've a small collection of their speakers in the garage - the ones that came out best in my experiments and I felt would be good to hang on to, plus, there's a pair of 771e on Atacama SE20 stands doing great service in our Dining room. So we have some tiny Monitor Audios that R brings along, and then Mission 771e (turn of the millenium), 737R (late 1980s) and 773 (turn of the millenium) speakers to play with. The Cyrus 8 is placed on an Isolplat on top of a Quadraspire rack and my Logitech Touch (streaming FLAC from NAS over Ethernet) is hooked up using Linn Black analogue interconnects. R has brought some solid core speaker cables (I can't remember which - I'll amend the post later with the correct info) and we start with the tiny Monitor Audios. The set up isn't ideal - all the speakers are stood in my listening room in front of the Linn Keilidhs so its not the best way to listen. They're well into the room but they'll all be put through the same circumstances so we'll be able to spot differences but won't be hearing any of them at their best. We don't listen to the MAs for long - there's loads of detail, not much bass - but what is there is OK - and female vocals are very enjoyable. But its all rather bright / harsh and I don't think they sound as good as the Tangent Evos. We quickly move on to the 771e on the Atacama stands (which are 2/3 sand filled) and there is a massive jump in quality. There's a quite suprising amount of bass out of these boxes, the treble is smoothed out significantly and there's a good deal more drive to the music. We listen to some of our "standard" listening tracks such as Eagle Eye Cherry's "Shooting Up In Vain", Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters" in 24/96 format and FAC15's take on Judie Tzuke's classic "Stay With Me Til Dawn". We enjoy them all and agree that the 771e are very acceptable.
Mission 771e (identity info - 771 has a silver bass driver centre cap, the 771e has gold)
We carry them out (the stands are heavy!) and in come the floor standing 773 - they're no wider nor deeper than the 771 but they're 923mm tall so they sit the tweeter higher in the room. The 773 and 771 share the same drivers - a 25mm silk dome tweeter and a 130mm Aerogel bass cone, but the 773 adds a second bass driver. The results are astonishing. R's reaction forces some choice language - he can't believe we're listening to a pair of speakers you can pick up for under £100. They're great - bass is deep, extended and articulate, vocals clear and imaging is good, if not as good as Mission's best in this regard. We listen to several more tracks just to make sure. If you listen to them reasonably loud they do a great job, quieter they remain dynamic, but crank up the Cyrus too much (for the speakers, not the amp) they do harden up somewhat. But that won't matter - the quiet to medium volume range is all that will be possible in R's digs. We decide that this combination (even using the rather limited DAC built into the Logitech Touch) is a very acceptable system and one that would be easy to live with in terms of tonal qualities and information retrieval.
Mission 773
We move onto the last option we have available to us - the late 1980s Mission 737R. Read about them on the Internet and you'll see lots of references to the "legendary" 737 Renaissance (the R stands for Renaissance which is printed in large black letters on the old skool front baffle which is painted in a dark silver dimpled finish - think Hammerite!) which was an interesting re-positioning of the "legendary" original Mission 770. Imagine the original Mission 770's thin chipboard cabinet and the translucent 200mm polypropylene base cone coupled with the cheaper tweeter from the 700 and you get the 737R - a kind of down-market version of the 770. At that time, the 770 had moved onto a more sophisticated cabinet and bass driver so I'm guessing this was a good way for Mission to continue to re-coup its investment in the translucent bass cone. Anyway, I digress. The upshot is that, following on from the 15+ years younger 773, the 737R were are a major step backwards. Good to see that Mission did make good progress over those years. In comparison to the 773 the 737R just sounds so crude. Bass is lighter (they benefit from being back to a wall so are distincly disadvantaged here) but its also somewhat flappy, treble is vague, bright and splashy and vocals get buried somewhere in the mix. Pretty disappointing - they are working fine, but they're really showing their age in terms of the sound they make. I finally realise that I can let them go - they might have been quite something in their day, but they're heavily out classed now. Its good to hear that progress has been made.
Mission 737 Renaissance (note there are 2 versions of this speaker, one with a matt black baffle and the other with the dimpled silver finish - not sure which came first, but pretty sure from listening to them that they're otherwise of identical spec)
So we have a result - the 773 are a suprisingly good speaker, and R is off back to eBay to see what the 773 action is like. When buying the 77 series from this era secondhand you need to look for those that are in immaculate condition because the very attractive "leather look" black vinyl front baffle covering sometimes has given up gripping onto the heavily chamfered / countered front panel.
Post script: Having got the result we did with the 773, the 771 on Atacamas didn't go back into the Dining Room - the 773 have taken their place. With their backs closer to a wall the 773 are sounding better still, even when driven by a lowly NAD 7020e receiver (basically a NAD 3020e amp with a built-in tuner). A Logitech Touch is now resident in the Dining Room system too - its finally climbed out of its box. So the second system gets a boost out of this exercise too. R has borrowed the 771e and stands for a few weeks until a suitable pair off 773s appear on eBay. A useful couple of hours of experiment that's lead to 2 excellent results for R and for our Dining room. R's also taken away some Linn K20 speaker cable to compare against the solid core stuff - will report his findings soon.
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