Question Help with vintage console wharfedale speaker fitting

chilipep66

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Hey all, first time post! I have an issue Id appreciate some help with!

My current vinyl setup is a Rega Planar 3 Turntable, Marantz 1030 amp, and a pair of Wharfedale 10.1 diamond speakers.

I recently inhereted a beautiful old console, everything on the inside was basically shot, so Ive outfitted it with all my new stuff.

Everythings all cool, but the Wharfedales are just sitting in the enclosures where the old drivers were, and it basically just sounds like what it is, speakers contained in tiny boxes...

my question is how can I go about using the Wharfes in this setup. Possibly take them out of their casing and fix them to the inside of my console? Would taking all the foam insulation out of the Wharfes help this issue and just leave them as is inside the console? any suggestions on how to maximize this would help so much!

here is the console
36054252185_e75f138129_b.jpg


how the speaker currently sits
36054251565_9d20744f3f_b.jpg


here is the console speaker enclosure bare

36054250445_2f8ff0f0d7_b.jpg
 
What you call a "console" is what we in the UK would term an old-fashioned "RadioGram" cabinet.
I certainly wouldn't entertain the thought of removing the Wharfedale speakers from their cabinets and putting them inside your "console".
You'll ruin them and I doubt the sound quality would be any good.
 
If you must do this then the best result will probably be to remove the existing panels with the speaker cut-outs completely. But you may well find that the speaker cloth is attatched to them. So you'd need to remove the cloth & cut a large square leaving just a frame. Then re-attach the cloth.

You then need to fully isolate the Wharfdale cabinets from the "console" with absortion feet & place them up against the speaker cloth but not touching anything. It will still sound crap but hopefully a little less crap. Although looking again there appear to be wooden battens running down the front of the speaker cloth? These will almost certainly be bad news so it may be best to fashion new grilles with new speaker cloth & lose the battens.

Oh & if that's a modern amp/receiver that you've mounted next to the deck then don't expect it to last long. Amps have ventilation in the top of the case to dissipate rising heat. By mounting in this orientation the heat has nowhere to go, so expect early component failure.
 
Agree with Crocodile, you need to remove that inner board. You can either cut the opening larger or you can simply replace the inner board.

I would also suggest lining the inside of the speaker containment area with Acoustics Foam, or some other sound absorbing material to keep sound from bouncing around in side the space, and to reduce the chance of that cavity resonating.

Steve/bluewizard
 

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