Wow, this takes me back....If I recall correctly, Down firing woofer, these holes are an addition to a slot load or port. |
Hi timlub,
Thanks for your response. If I read the information I have found correctly, it should take you back to 1967 or maybe 1968. You are correct as they do have a 12" downward firing woofer and a midrange/tweeter plate that is shared with the Empire 9000, 9000M, 8000 and 8200. I removed the lower plate to clean out 50 years of spider webs and dust bunnies and to look at the surrounds on the woofers. They look good for 50 years of hanging upside down. I also removed the top (mine have the standard wood top as opposed to the marble upgrade) and neither on the top nor bottom do I see any other slot, opening or port. Just the ones on the back of which one system has four of the ports plugged and two open and one with 5 of the ports plugged and one open. If they are the ports used as a slot load, it sounds like they should all be open. One thought I had was that maybe these plugs were installed only for storage and/or shipping (maybe to keep out critters) and were meant to be removed upon unpacking and set up. The older gentleman I bought them from said he had never hooked them up or played them from the day he bought them. Maybe removing the plugs was called out in the owners manual as part of the setup, but since he never used them, he never took the plugs out. They are in unbelievably good physical condition for being 50 years old. The cabinets are nearly flawless. The wood is just dry and needs to be treated to bring it back to new luster. Maybe I'll try taking all the plugs out and running a few tests. Thanks again!
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I've always wanted to hear those speakers. Have you listened to them yet? |
Hi roxy54,
I did give them a preliminary listen to check to see if all the drivers worked. I had heard from some other folks that it was very common to find the tweeters and/or midranges nonfunctional due to an electrolytic corrosion problem between what they said were aluminum voice coils and the external interconnect. I don't know if that is true, but all drivers seem to work. My first test was a quick hook-up to a Pioneer SX-1250 I am restoring that I bought at the local pawn shop for $29.99! It was cosmetically beautiful and complete, but had a nasty 60 Hz hum on just the AM and FM inputs that was quickly diagnosed and repaired. They have a very 1960's sort of sound to them similar to the Harman Kardon HK-50 from 1969, but with more punch and power handling capability. I also want to check the crossover components as they are 50 years old now. After I complete the cleanup and spider web/dust bunny removal, the plan is to hook them up to the equipment I'll be using them with and give them a thorough listening too! So far I have been very pleased with what I hear. In addition, I really like the cabinet work and styling of the fluted column. I'm hoping that I might find the optional marble tops somewhere in the future as I think they would make these systems look even better!
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You can go to a countertop shop and have them made. The originals were white marble but you can have any color and material you want! How about green quartz sparkle? Or black marble?
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I did give it a thought to get new ones made. I'll have to check into the pricing and selection. A friend of mine suggested I get synthetic marble and then drill and inset a series of individual LED's around the forward edge making a digital power meter of sorts on the top of each cabinet, built right into the top! I'm not so sure about that idea, but it does sound interesting! :-)
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I just looked these up and looked at images... I saw these in more like the early to mid 1980's... working on speakers for a long time.... Now that I go to images, I'm not sure if what I had been in was an 8000 or a 9000, but the woofer mounted on a plate firing down, below that plate was a slot with a screen mesh all the way around, the bass was fired out of that slot. |
Hi timlub,
I don't know how long Empire continued to make these particular models of speaker as the amount of information on the web seems incomplete and sketchy at best. The 1964 Empire catalog listed the Empire Royal Grenadier 9000 with a 15" downward firing woofer in what appears to be an acoustic suspension design and the iconic external gold colored midrange and tweeter. It also showed the Empire Grenadier 8000 with a 12" downward firing woofer in what appears to be a vented design enclosure with the same iconic external gold colored midrange and tweeter. You are right in that they both had a screen mesh around the bottom of the cabinet for the woofer. In an ad from 1966 and what I think is an excerpt from the 1967 Empire catalog I see the Empire Royal Grenadier 9000M and the Empire Grenadier 8000P. The 9000M appears to be basically unchanged cosmetically from the 9000, but the 8000P now has a fluted column design as opposed to the smooth column of the 8000 from 1964.
There seem to have been other models like the 7500, 7000, 6500, etc. including the very unique Neptune speaker that came later and at a lower price point. They all continued with the downward firing woofer configuration and front mounted midrange and tweeter, but looked entirely different. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information regarding a clear timeline with all the models from Empire's beginning to the end of their run.
When I was a kid in the 1960's, I only knew one person (my next door neighbor, who was a lawyer) who had a pair of Empire Royal Grenadier 9000's, with the marble top. Looking at the original price and adjusting for inflation a rough calculation would put the cost of a pair of Empire Royal Grenadier 9000's from 1964 at approximately $2400.00 in today's money.
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I did find something about those ports on the Empire 8000P's. I'm now changing my mind and believe they were for more than packing and shipping. I found an old ad for them from 1966. It was on a French audio collectors website (of course it was all in French, but I understood the pictures), but the ad was in English. It made the following statement.
"Its exclusive dynamic reflex stop system allows you to adjust the bass and treble response to suit your individual room acoustics"
The crossover adjustment on the bottom is marked only for "High Frequency Control". Low, medium and high. So it looks like the only way to adjust the bass, would be to change the woofer load by removing some or all of the vent plugs or leaving them all in. There are six ports on each cabinet and right now I have four of the six ports plugged on each. Mainly because I only have 9 plugs total as the remaining 3 were missing.
I also made at least one mistake in one of my ramblings above. The other Empire speaker I was trying to think of was the Jupiter, not the Neptune. I knew it was one of those planets! ;-) The cabinet looked like the head of "Robert" the robot from the old Gerry Anderson kids show Fireball XL5! Very unique!
I really like so much of the old equipment from the "golden era of audio" and before.
Regards,
Vintage_heath |
Thanks everyone for the great information part of the discussion is taking them apart how is that achieved thanks for any help you can get does anybody have a manual on these things ?
Thanks again
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Hi greystereoman,
I don't have a manual, but have rebuilt the crossovers in my pair of 8000P's. Everything is accessed through the bottom. So flip one upside down and take out the four screws. The wooden bottom will come off. Be careful of the golden grate as the edges are sharp and can damage the finish or the woofer. The wires from the crossover switch will need to be unsoldered. Keep track of where they go. The wires go through the edge/frame of the woofer. Undo the 4 studs and remove the woofer being careful to feed the wires from the switch you disconnected through the holes. Disconnect the woofer keeping track of which wires connect to it. Some fiberglass sound deadening material is stapled over the crossover. Remove the staples and the sound deadening material. There you will find the crossover components. Two inductors and a number of capacitors. You will need to replace all of the caps as they are guaranteed to be bad by now. You should be able to look down the enclosure following the wiring inside and see the mid-range and tweeter. I have a schematic of the crossover with values for all components and all the internal wiring and even ran some LTSpice simulations of the crossovers and generated a nice plot. Unfortunately, I don't see how to attach this information to this post as they are PDF's or JPEG files on my computer. Hope this information helps.
Happy New Year!
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Hello,
I just picked up a pair of Grenadier 6000's. The tweeter and midrange of one of them comes in and out. I need to open up the speaker cabinet to take a look. You mentioned that you have a schematic of the internal wiring. Would it be possible to send me the PDF through email? I dont' see a way to send you a private message.
Thanks,
Fortino
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I do have a schematic for the Empire 8000P speaker system that I drew up while replacing the wax and paper capacitors in the crossover and to run LTspice simulations on the network. Unfortunately, I don't think this will help you as the crossovers used in the Grenadier 6000's are different than the ones used in the 8000P. Even though I have never owned a pair of the 6000s, if you look at eBay right now, there are a pair of these crossovers listed for sale. Looking at them, I can see there are components intentionally missing in this crossover design that are utilized in the 8000P. I have heard from other Empire owners who have the model 8000, 8000P and 9000 that a lot of problems with the midrange and tweeters in these units (which all use the same gold face plate array) that these components suffer from electrolytic corrosion problems which stem from the use of aluminum wire in the voice coils where they interface with the copper wire used for further interconnect. This causes intermittent problems with these drivers in the early stages of corrosion and permanent loss of functionality as the corrosion progresses to open circuit. They can be repaired, but it is a tricky and delicate repair. I can not say this same problem exists with the 6000 as I do not know what tweeter and midrange is used in this model and how they are constructed. This may not be the answer you wanted to hear, but hope it helps in tracking down your issue. If you take your speaker apart, you can use your DVM/VOM/VTVM to check for open circuit or high impedance through the midrange and tweeter components. That should give you a good idea where the problem is. Be sure to check all the solder connections of the wiring on the crossover board terminal strips and of course those pesky old capacitors. Best Regards.
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