vintagelove
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2013
- Messages
- 190
Hello and thanks for looking. Short version, in a weird set of coincidences, I ended up with five NOS Peavey scorpion baskets, for 10 bucks each, and a bunch of magnets... So now I have 4 New Scorpions, YAY.... but the last one... not so lucky. Here's the issue.
It reads an open coil... hmmm... I'm 99% sure it's NOS, no signs of use, and all the other ones worked perfectly.
I can't find any damage to the coil itself.
I start playing with the tinsel wire (with probes attached to the speaker terminals while looking at the meter), while holding the inside of the cone where the tinsel would attach to the coil. AHA! If I move the positive tinsel wire while holding inside the cone, I start getting readings on the meter, very high ohms; like megaohms, and fluctuating, but it's something.
Does this sound like a faulty connection between the tinsel and the coil?
If yes, any advice on how to proceed? I really don't have much to lose at this point, and since I already have a bunch of working speakers now, for very little investment, I figure sacrificing one to the gods of breaking stuff in order to get better at repairing stuff is probably the best course of action. Sooooo
1 - Remove the dust cover (any advice here? Is it possible to keep the original?)
2 - Hopefully solder the connection and read something that makes sense on the meter.
3 - Re-attach the dust cover. Uncle Doug from YT suggested titebond, which I have. Any objections?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
A bit more detail. I had picked up a Peavey Special 130, and it's a great little amp. In particular, the scorpion sounded really good. I thought I would like to get one to stick in my recording cabinet for jazz, or other darker guitar sounds. That's when I saw the guy on Facebook marketplace selling the replacement baskets, and I couldn't turn them down for that price. I found four magnets for five bucks apiece, got the first 2 speakers working, and they sound just like how I wanted them to. Then I got curious about the scorpion plus magnets, so I tracked a couple of those down, and got them working yesterday. It's interesting hearing the difference in magnet on the same basket. Definitely improve the efficiency, seems to be a bit more on the bottom, but not too much a difference in the top as the scorpions don't extend too high anyway.
All in all, very happy with the outcome of this little endeavor. I can very much recommend them if someone is looking for a speaker on the warm/neutral spectrum. The only caveat with the regular scorpions, is that they are pretty inefficient. Definitely not more than 96db. Not necessarily, a bad thing, especially if you are trying to get a tube amp working without being too loud. But if you're pairing it with another speaker, they can easily overwhelmed. The scorpion plus, I'd say about 98db... They claim 101... I don't know about that. Perhaps it's just the tonality, but it definitely wasn't louder than a WGS g12c/s, which is spec'd at 100db. Sounded better though...
Hope that's useful for anyone curious about scorpions.
It reads an open coil... hmmm... I'm 99% sure it's NOS, no signs of use, and all the other ones worked perfectly.
I can't find any damage to the coil itself.
I start playing with the tinsel wire (with probes attached to the speaker terminals while looking at the meter), while holding the inside of the cone where the tinsel would attach to the coil. AHA! If I move the positive tinsel wire while holding inside the cone, I start getting readings on the meter, very high ohms; like megaohms, and fluctuating, but it's something.
Does this sound like a faulty connection between the tinsel and the coil?
If yes, any advice on how to proceed? I really don't have much to lose at this point, and since I already have a bunch of working speakers now, for very little investment, I figure sacrificing one to the gods of breaking stuff in order to get better at repairing stuff is probably the best course of action. Sooooo
1 - Remove the dust cover (any advice here? Is it possible to keep the original?)
2 - Hopefully solder the connection and read something that makes sense on the meter.
3 - Re-attach the dust cover. Uncle Doug from YT suggested titebond, which I have. Any objections?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
A bit more detail. I had picked up a Peavey Special 130, and it's a great little amp. In particular, the scorpion sounded really good. I thought I would like to get one to stick in my recording cabinet for jazz, or other darker guitar sounds. That's when I saw the guy on Facebook marketplace selling the replacement baskets, and I couldn't turn them down for that price. I found four magnets for five bucks apiece, got the first 2 speakers working, and they sound just like how I wanted them to. Then I got curious about the scorpion plus magnets, so I tracked a couple of those down, and got them working yesterday. It's interesting hearing the difference in magnet on the same basket. Definitely improve the efficiency, seems to be a bit more on the bottom, but not too much a difference in the top as the scorpions don't extend too high anyway.
All in all, very happy with the outcome of this little endeavor. I can very much recommend them if someone is looking for a speaker on the warm/neutral spectrum. The only caveat with the regular scorpions, is that they are pretty inefficient. Definitely not more than 96db. Not necessarily, a bad thing, especially if you are trying to get a tube amp working without being too loud. But if you're pairing it with another speaker, they can easily overwhelmed. The scorpion plus, I'd say about 98db... They claim 101... I don't know about that. Perhaps it's just the tonality, but it definitely wasn't louder than a WGS g12c/s, which is spec'd at 100db. Sounded better though...
Hope that's useful for anyone curious about scorpions.
