I ain't gonna change habits at this late date.:D You are beating a dead horse Cal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cal Weldon
The Radian BTW IS Mylar fer sure.
Radian was established in the late 80's I think....
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I ain't gonna change habits at this late date.:D You are beating a dead horse Cal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cal Weldon
The Radian BTW IS Mylar fer sure.
Radian was established in the late 80's I think....
Fair enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Guy
Cheers OG. :)
I was at the Altec factory one day in OKC when Jerry Hubbard was developing the Pascalite diaphragms. Here's what he told me -
EV refused to allow Altec to develop anything new, so they had to couch a lot of their work as "improvements of existing products" so that EV would fund the R&D. Apparently, EV didn't want little ol' Altec outdoing them...
This is what happened when they developed the Pascalite diaphragm - they had to tell EV it was an improvement on the 288 so they could get permission to do so. The result, eventually, was the 909 and the 299, but they were viewed by EV as mere "upgrades" to the 902 and 288, so they let it pass. The same thing happened with the A700...
Looking at the different samples of destroyed diaphragms that Jerry had on a board was quite interesting - he was trying out different allows, materials, etc., to arrive at a diaphragm that performed as well, acoustically, as the 288's diaphragm, but wasn't as delicate. From the looks of what I saw, there were a lot of materials that just weren't suitable - either they burnt to a crisp or the diaphragms shattered (the most common problem, as I recall). Finally, Jerry found the right combination of metal alloy, former material, and high-temp glues and arrived at what we now know as the Pascalite diaphragms.
When I asked him later why they were called Pascalite, he replied that he named them after the great mathematician Pascal, and combined his name with an old=style method of marketing to arrive with "Pascalite".
Cool! Thanks Todd, that's great info.
FWIW, Radian started with replacement 'frams back in the 80s. Then went on to build drivers, too.
I have a pair of 1.4" Radian drivers with the mylar suspension that were built about 1991. Early models, AFAIK.
Radian was formed , as I understand mostly by Renkus, while Emilar was going belly up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Panomaniac
The Emilar factory was padlocked at the time from legal action.
Not sure why he chose to form Renkus-Heinz instead of continuing with Radian, can only assume differences occurred between partners.
Here's an interesting paper by Hilliard and Renkus (who also worked at Altec) describing the development of what I presume became the Symbiotik diaphragm(s);
http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/...-in_Emilar.pdf
courtesy nutshellhifi
And Cal is right, it was Kapton/polymide...;)
(Although Altec did use Mylar too, in several microphones and the 3000 tweets) :)
If & when need to replace my original Altec 806 'phrams, I can replace it with a GPA Pascalite 'phram, is that right, and it will pretty such sound like the old Altec except there will probably be better high freqs?
Great link bfish, thanks for posting!:2thumbsup:
You may not have original 806 frams if they are Symbiotik.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Lee
It should sound quite a bit better. Either aluminum or Pascalite is an improvement over the Symbiotik, I never cared for them.
OTOH the Symbiotik sounds much better in the bigger driver (291). Just never liked them in the one inchers.
I will make a serious effort, but come on guys, I still catch myself saying CPS for Hertz or calling capacitors condensers....:)
Interesting the 4 inch VC in that paper bfish posted, wondering how much difference there was between it and the old WE 4 incher.
CPS=Cycles per second, rather than HZ. U R show your age. I still use capacitor or condenser interchangeably today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Guy
bfish: thanks for the link, I will read it.