[TheChairGuy]

Huh, I've always wondered....

For as many years as I've been buying stuff there, I remember hearing a variety of speakers with that Lineaum dipole and monopole tweeter sound decent on a variety of awful Optimus electronics over the years.

They were always hooked up with poor 16ga. wire, bad source and amplification, and sat on a wobbly shelf next to TV's and such.  Yet, despite these many hurdles, that darn tweeter always sounded satisfying to me.  Forget the bass and midrange performamce for a moment...

So, I did a little research on the tweeter.  Once made by a little company in Oregon, the technology was purchased by Aurasound and Radio Shack made (and still make) the speakers with this tweeter type in Malaysia under license.

New speakers have a polypropelene ribbon; prior to 2000 the ribbons were of mylar (a la Quad and others I believe).  The new poly ribbons have been described as hard and brittle, while the mylar units are easy on the ears and nicely extended.

Cutting to the chase a bit, I bought a gently used pair of Optimus LX-8's on ebay recently.  These took a bit of time to find as they seem to be the best combination of virtues for my listening needs.  They are tallish at 18", have the dipole tweeter mounted topside (avoiding most cabinet interactions and beeming of monopole designs), ported with a 8"poly woofer reported to go to 50Hz.  I don't listen to my music loud...50Hz clean is sufficent.

Well, lemme' tell you, the 50Hz+ you get outta' the box is awful, yet the tweeter sounds splendid.  Opening up the box you find a bunch of interesting things: an 8" Peerless cone (their cheapest rubber surround series #831920, but crap - who expected a Peerless in a RatShack speaker?), 8 sides of cheapo particleboard, a PVC pipe that both vents the woofer and provides internal bracing, a decent plastic port that probably does something for 'chuffing at high levels), and fibrefill.

The major achilles heel of this speaker (and probably all Lineaum RatShack speakers) is horrible cabinetry.  Not the look, the performance.  The LX-8's seem to have been designed by a smart and innovative designer, then ripped to shreds by cookie cutters.

Parts Express to the rescue!  Loaded up on Vinyl Damping sheets and a nice high mass 18" speaker stands on sale there for $85.25 these days.  They are outstanding for the money at 24 lbs. each and more like 50 when sand filled.  A good stand (solidly adhered with Quakehold - hey, I live in San Fran) really has dramatic effect. I rolled mortite rope caulking strips in each of the creases and corners to seal, reduce cabinet wave/corner interactions and deaden the cabinet a bit.  Then, I lined each of the 8 internal walls with the VE-1 vinyl damping sheets.

I then worked on the 3lb woofer basket.  This stamped steel unit needed some bulking, so I mortite (I actually like Dennis brand better as it seems to roll out easier) vital points of the cone and add some more vinyl damping around, too.  Oh, I also placed the VE-1 on the rear outside cabinet and bottoms before I ran out of the  stuff.  

The sound now?  Dramatically improved.  You can hear the bass lines cleanly and there is now no such need for a subwoofer (again, my opinion).  My wife, who usually doesn't care a whit, said it's the nicest set of speakers I've had in the system.  I admit, I'm a bit of a cheapo and haven't invested top dollar in speakers because I find them the most maddening of all components in the system (that is, the effect on the playback sound) so she has heard, my tweeked 3D Acoustics acoustic suspension 2 way, my Camber 5.0ti floorstanders (eech! Great detail and bass but screechy metal tweeter), Quad 11L (exceptionally easy to listen to and amazing cabinet for the money, but Dad needed speakers so..I'm a good son, ain't I?), Vandersteen 1C's (see comments on Camber above, but less screechy with beter imaging and better integrated bass) and now these big/little LX-8's.

I'm going to kick these up a notch to see there true potential by applying more VE-1 to the outside cabinets walls (created constrained layer damping), rewiring the woofer with some nice 10 or 12 ga. wire (it's friggin' 20 ga. there now!) and probably some Kimber 4TC for the already overachieving tweeter.  Then, I'm going to finally use those MultiAmps for what they do best - using their active crossovers.  That wil be interesting.

I'm a bit less then $300.00 in total into this thing (including stands) and I am happy.  The next $100.00 or so investment (and time) should prove interesting.

Well, thanks for reading this long winded scribe through and all the best to you.

[nathanm]

A friend of mine has a pair of old Radio Shack speakers (I'm guessing 15 years old or so) hooked to some kind of a Pioneer receiver with a cheap portable CD player as a source and it really isn't as bad as I thought it would be.  He's got them on some wood stands he made, just two wooden pieces on the top and bottom with two thin boards as legs.  

Radio Shack always gets a bad rap, but they must be doing something right, otherwise they would've went out of business a long time ago.  People like to buy cheap stuff, what can I say?  My first speaker building project was four full range Radio Shack drivers bolted to 1/4" thick plywood paneling and the whole works hot glued together!  Ran it with the Realistic 35-watt PA amp!  Oh boy, I'm getting all misty-eyed...

The nice thing about half-ass gear is that you can crack 'em open and easily see what can be improved upon and the anxiety of screwing up the tweaks is all but gone cause the thing is so inexpensive to begin with.  There's definitely an appeal there.

[mvwine]

Back in my day (begins the Olde Fart) when I worked at Radio Shack, They actually had gear that wasn't too bad - mid-fi, but as good as the Pioneer and Kenwood stuff at that time (1982-88), but they have really gone downhill since, as far as home audio goes.

The problem with Radio Shack has always been that they outsourced their stuff from different manufacturers - so you had some that was decent, but other that was crap with a capital C.

Mach One speakers, The 2100 receiver, the Minimus 7 speakers, were all as good as most mid-fi products in their classes. I've never heard any of their Linaeum tweetered speakers, they sound like they might be a place to start tweaking.

[TheChairGuy]

Radio Shack is certainly inconsistent in their offerings.  Once in awhile you find a diamond-in-the-rough, but most of the time you get shiny rock.

I think the problem is made worse by the fact that even when something decent is offered, the folks that mostly buy the Radio Shack item, misuse it or don't set it up properly.  Often, it's because the Radio Shack owners manual is poorly written asnd/or has nonsense instructions.

For instance, with these LX-8's, there is no mention of the dipole radiation pattern and that it requires at least a couple feet placement from any back or side walls.  It's critical that this is done - the high frequency sound is choked and smeared otherwise.  Some of the mid and low frequency misses are greatly alleviated by positioning this ported speaker a couple feet away, too.  Good, heavy stands, with any standmounter, are really important, too.

Maybe I'll put a Part 2 together of this when it's fully tricked out: additional damping, changing over wiring and use of active crossovers.  The most I'm into this project will be $400.00 (including stands) and after listening this weekend to them (2 weeks total now), I am way more than $300.00 pleased right now.

[U4EA]

There was some RS driver that is highly sought after.  Maybe Ed Schilling from the Horne Shop knows.  It was a 4 or 5 inch one.  It was raved about for years.  But, they do not make it anymore.

[JohnR]

Radio Shack buy vast quantities of stuff and sell it cheap. So they get some good bargains in there occasionally. Personally I didn't exactly fall in love with the 40-1134 but it was like 12 bucks so so what

However they seem to be working on removing the bargains from their catalogue.

[TheChairGuy]

I was wondering when you would step in John R. - figured you had experience with the lineaum tweeter - as well as nearly every other tweeter made in the past (fill in the blanks) years.

This is my fist significant tweek of a speaker in a long time, and it is improving dramatically with the  simple stuff already.  Finishing off dampening, maybe changing out woofer and going active could be interesting with this one...it's already quite listenable due mostly to that pretty easy-going tweeter.

FYI - RS catalog no more.  Only web/online now and stores.  RSH/Radio Shack floundering a bit nowadays post-dot.com era, so they are leaning out the deals.