Rebuilding a pair of vintage Sansui speakers SP-X7700

I first posted on 06 Jan 2016 on the pair of Sansui speakers. Although the cabinets were disintegrating badly, the drivers and grills were in good condition and the speakers played perfectly. What surprised me was that they partnered very well with my tiny Trends Class-T amplifier TA-10.1 which outputs a mere 10 watts into 8 ohms (see http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/trends2/trends.html).



When playing Dave Brubeck's Take Five track for example, the dynamics of the drum solo particularly the heft of the kick drums made one disbelieve the tiny amp was driving them! But then again, the speakers have a sensitivity of 97dB!

The journey of rebuilding the speakers is shown by the photos below.

The condition at the beginning
















The process of rebuilding

Except for the box everything else in the speakers were reused including the baffle, crossover, port, polyfil and even the screws. Fortunately both the baffles were in very good condition and made the dismantling and reassembling the drivers easy. In addition the wooden lattice grills being also in good condition, fitted perfectly in the original baffles. I sawed each speaker into half to expose the braces and other fittings inside.









The rebuilt speakers

With a completely new box, I decided not to follow convention and had it painted funky red instead of the traditional speaker finishes. It turned out reddish brown instead. I supposed I could respray it Ferrari Red with car paint but decided against spending more money. To match the box colour, the grills were sprayed matt black. Nice!

With the help of my sifu, the speakers were carefully resoldered to the crossover and reassembled. Looks pretty good with the new look














How do they sound?

With the new MDF boxes, they obviously sounded much more coherent than when the drivers were housed in the half disintegrated boxes. Piano notes sounded very good and crisp. Violins sweet and cellos mellow. I like it.


Specifications:

Type: 4 way, 5 driver loudspeaker system
Power Handling: 160W
Impedance: 8Ω
Bass: 1 x 406mm cone
Midrange: 1 x 121mm cone
Tweeter: 1 x 154x50mm horn
Super Tweeter: 2 x 45mm cone
Dimensions: 443 x 661 x 295mm
Year: circa 1980

Contact:

hywong2005@gmail.com

Well done!

Good job! 

Nice paint job, spray or brush painted? Looks like a pro job. 
Old speakers are handsome.

Great job.

atoz wrote:Nice paint job, spray or brush painted? Looks like a pro job. 
Old speakers are handsome.

They were spray painted by the carpenter who made the new boxes.

Thanks guys for your positive feedback!

Great job.   These are 12 inch woofers right ?
Mind sharing who your carpenter it and how much it cost you ?

Thanks

great bro

hirez wrote:Great job.   These are 12 inch woofers right ?
Mind sharing who your carpenter it and how much it cost you ?

Thanks

Thanks hirez. The woofer is 406mm so it's nearly 16". Yes huge!

The carpenter is in Sri Kembangan, Selangor. See website below

http://www.chuanhingindustri.com/

Wow, what a great discovery. I never knew a workshop specialist in building loudspeakers boxes in Malaysia. Roughly how much you paid for the new boxes? 
Thanks for sharing

atoz wrote:Wow, what a great discovery. I never knew a workshop specialist in building loudspeakers boxes in Malaysia. Roughly how much you paid for the new boxes? 
Thanks for sharing

The price is reasonable. Get a quote from them if interested.

Sure will, one day when needed.

Hi Wong, this is very well done DIY project, I am looking forward to start mine too.....

Well done! Nice....

Wow...looking very nice. 
But the kink to Chuan Hing does not work. Any other links ?

klimal wrote:Wow...looking very nice. 
But the kink to Chuan Hing does not work. Any other links ?

Try this link for contact details of Chuan Hing Industry.

http://www.hotfrog.com.my/business/sgr/serdang/chuan-hing-industri_243088