tweeters for Philharmonic?

[jonathan dollimore]

There's a set of tweeters on ebay at the moment - number 
281238453267 - and I'm hoping someone can tell me if they are suitable for a Philharmonic. They look right but....And they're expensive...

Thanks, Jonathan

[Scott Seickel]

They look right, but I am not the expert on tweeters.   My Philharmonic has a different style tweeter, which I think is the later version. 

You need the crossover network to hook them up...that will not be easy to find. 

[Y2K Bruce]

The hammered silver pair just sold today for $1000. Not to me BTW. They looked nice but were missing the plug at the end of the Y cable into the woofer. This set did not use the crossover.

There are a set of black tweeters and the matching crossover box and 15" woofer still up there for auction. price is rising on them though. The going Ebay rate on the crossover box is about $300.

[David C. Poland]

Jonathan,

The early Philharmonic like the pointer dial model used the 5B62 & 5B63 tweeters (that looked somewhat like the AW-23 tweeters) - silver paint - but the Philly tweeters had permanent magnets and so the cable plug had only 2 pins. Proper If your Philharmonic speaker has a single 2 hole tweeter socket on the pedestal base. The crossover consisted of a capacitor in series with the tweeter voice coils, mounted on one of the 5B62 tweeter. Such a pair just sold, with missing cable plug

The later Phillharmonics used tweeters dark color with bullet shaped bell covers, - but I have not inspected this version.

Later the optional 4 unit speaker system for the Philharmonic (and Phantom) used a flange mount 15 inch speaker, pair of tweeters and the the silver painted crossover box with the 2 top mounted black coils. Such a combination is in ebay now as 4 separate items.

[Scott Seickel]

Here are a few pics of my early Philharmonic Tweeters.

[jonathan dollimore]

Scott Seickel said:

Here are a few pics of my early Philharmonic Tweeters.

[jonathan dollimore]

Thank you all for your help. All very interesting. I do wonder though whether  on AM you can hear the difference the tweeters might make. But perhaps they are more valuable feeding say a VHF or other quality signal through the gram input?  Bruce - I believe it was you asking for some pics of my McMurdo Silver 15-17 via the other site. For some reason is wont allow me to upload pictures, If you email me via this site, I can send you some pics that way. 

David C. Poland said:

Jonathan,

The early Philharmonic like the pointer dial model used the 5B62 & 5B63 tweeters (that looked somewhat like the AW-23 tweeters) - silver paint - but the Philly tweeters had permanent magnets and so the cable plug had only 2 pins. Proper If your Philharmonic speaker has a single 2 hole tweeter socket on the pedestal base. The crossover consisted of a capacitor in series with the tweeter voice coils, mounted on one of the 5B62 tweeter. Such a pair just sold, with missing cable plug

The later Phillharmonics used tweeters dark color with bullet shaped bell covers, - but I have not inspected this version.

Later the optional 4 unit speaker system for the Philharmonic (and Phantom) used a flange mount 15 inch speaker, pair of tweeters and the the silver painted crossover box with the 2 top mounted black coils. Such a combination is in ebay now as 4 separate items.

[David C. Poland]

If you have a 1) fairly close AM station that comes in strong, 2) there is low adjacent station interference and 3) the station puts out a high quality signal taking maximum advantage of the allowable band width then when you open up the fidelity control the tweeters should function for better audio. Otherwise the large speaker alone is quite adequate.

The 23 tube Allwave and 30 tube Philharmonic AM were designed to take advantage of the experimental high fidelity AM broadcasting stations in several cities at around 1500 on the dial. These stations had 20 KC station separation rather than the usual 10 KC separation of the rest of the Broadcast band, thereby allowing audio frequency response transmission upwards of 15,000 hertz (cps). No FM radio yet.

However, these days for quality audio, use the phono input and play a CD player, phonograph, FM tuner or even an IPOD. If you have a vintage mono tube preamp to use, even better. The sound quality of the late 1930's pre-war Scotts with the optional tweeters is impressive and, in contrast to many solid state systems, is not fatiguing to listen to. I think these Scotts rival mid 1950's mono hi-fi for sound.