OPTIMUS T200-X HOT RODDED TO XXXX 12dB CROSSOVERS BUTYLENE HALF ROLL VIRGIN TALC PROPYLENE CONES

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Get comfortable, this is gonna' be a LONG one. There's a LOT to go over with this pair...

Up for grabs is this PAIR of Optimus T200 tower speakers...If you are reading this, you are probably familiar with Optimus from the 70s and 80s.. There's Some decent consumer grade stuff..

These have the real wood veneer and look pretty nice overall.. I'd say an 8.5 out of 10, only because the rear corners have a couple 'dings", but not bad... if you aren't looking for it, it won't catch your eye...

You've NEVER heard a T200 pair like these!!!

I did a number of upgrades and I'll itemize the best that I can..

First thing- The impedance is the correct 8 Ohm total load, and the woofers are brand new.They are dual 10" , BOTH actual woofers and not a passive radiator, so the bass response is exceptionally smooth and powerful.

EVERYTHING is gasket so it's an actual air tight "sealed enclosure"... If you push on 1 woofer(NOT recommended) the other will push out from the air pressure internally.. Stuffed with fiberglass and/or poly fill insulation.......Nice tight, punchy bass!

Each woofer has a 1.75" diameter ALUMINUM voice coil former which is radially vented, and also have a virgin polypropylene ( not that recycled crap that cracks and sounds awful) cone assembly. A bit of attention was paid to making smooth, even, well damped/ fast to "restore", and not have secondary " Ghost Notes" being reflected back into the cone because of cone edge resonance issues.

These feature butylene rubber/ half roll surrounds which have high compliance/ high excursion capabilities. The butylene is an excellent dampener, and along with that, each cone has 6 dampener discs to enhance the dampening capabilities.Not to mention- are TALC LOADED....The rear pole plates are also vented to keep everything cool during high power applications..

The midrange speakers also have been improved.These are the PMR 6.5" sealed back midranges and can play LOUD, as they are really efficient.These have NOMEX voice coil formers, full paper body cones, ReZon-Ex treated surrounds, and a built in metal grille for protection... FAR superior to the originals, which have cones that are MORE than TWICE the weight of these cones.. Obviously- lighter moving mass = better fidelity, and a speaker's ability to stop playing when the signal is removed....

The tweeters- these are still in really nice shape, and funny enough- have a fairly decent spectral decay measurement , so I'm leaving these in.. They sound REALLY natural, as they look to be a 2" PAPER cone type tweeter with a SMALL diameter voice coil, and very low moving mass..If you have ever seen the back of these, they have a nice robust magnetic structure..

Now- the L-Pads/ volume controls for the mid and tweeter...

I kept the originals in, but I wanted to install actual ceramic L-pads. I don't personally think the OEM units provide a whole lot of control, but I'm leaving them installed and in the circuit.

CROSSOVERS- Originally, all they had was a single ELECTROLYTIC capacitor on the mid, and a single cap on the tweeter...The woofers were direct across the inputs.. ( Hmmmmm)....IMO-=. that's NOT a crossover......besides- that was calculated values , and NOT from a measured response curve while the unit was mounted, not to mention spectral decay measurements..

I got rid of the electrolytic caps on the mid and tweeter, dropped their xo points and put actual 12db crossovers poly film and air core....

OEM crossover points were 1K and 5Khz...

Welp, I did a few measurements, and found out that the mids and tweeters CAN play a lot lower than that.....Sooooo, since a smaller/ lighter cone can reproduce the details MUCH better than a woofer, I dropped the XO points, but steepened the slopes.

Now, the XO points are 300 Hz and 2.4 KHz!.. It's obvious that a light nimble midrange can do 300Hz better than a heavy cone woofer,( and stop much faster with less overshoot and ringing) and also that a really light moving mass in the tweeter can do 2.5Khz much better than the 6.5" midrange.. By dropping and steepening the points, it REALLY made an improvement!

I made my own 12dB crossovers and I did not use sand cast resistors, electrolytic capacitors, or iron core inductors. Those do nothing but smudge and smear the signal before it even gets to the drivers!. I installed AIR core inductors and poly film capacitors...You can see this in one of the internal pictures..

The only thing that I have to complain about with this beautiful pair is that one of the springs on the rear bare wire terminals sticks about half the time, but still accepts the wires..I just wanted to bring that up.... Plus, I just wanted to complain about SOMETHING....

........Fellas', this pair is truly greater than the sum of it's parts... if you compare these to a stock pair, .....

....well, it's just not a fair fight. These are now beefed up to the next level..... or two..

Impedance is 8 Ohms

SPL is 94dB

Power is 200 continuous

Response is 34 Hz to 18Khz.........

((((( keep in mind, that if you think your FM radio in your hi fi system ( auto or home) sounds good, that FM radio is only broadcast from 50Hz to 15KHz!)))))...

It'd be cool if someone took these to even the NEXT level.... If I had the time and money, I would add more internal bracing to stiffen the boxes up, install some sort of dampener sheets like black hole or dyna mat, use ceramic L-Pads, flush mount/ router the speaker mounting holes to make the speakers flush with the baffle boards, Router/ round over ALL corners, and use GR Research copper tube connectors for the input terminals....

The shipping on these is expensive, because they will be at least 36x14x13" and around 45 pounds EACH, and they will be shipped in 2 boxes for safety... That, and to avoid that "Over 70 Pounds" penalty that will be applied..

ANY questions or concerns, just ask.

THANKS GUYS!