Signet SL-388 tower speakers..

[Kvn_Walker]

I picked up a pair of these in January for not much money (under $200). I've found precious little information on them, which tells me they were a sales flop. It does seem like the people who did buy Signet speakers loved them, though, and Stereophile had a positive review of the 2-way SL-280's. Then again, 99% of Stereophile reviews are positive, so here's your salt. .

I have a few pictures on my phone of the inside, but until I can post those, here's a pair for sale on Reverb to show for reference.

I like the build quality of the cabinet, crossover, and drivers. You can tell these weren't thrown together cheaply. Interestingly, they are indeed 4-way speakers, even though they look like may of the contemporary 3-way dual 8's out there. As the pictures I will post show, the lower woofer is isolated in the bottom half of the enclosure with a tuned port, and the upper woofer is in its own sealed space in the upper half. The upper woofer seems to be bandpassed and not low-passed. I wish I knew what the crossover points were.

These actually replaced my Klipsch RP-280F's in the living room. Those got on my nerves with the narrow sweet spot. The size of the room prevented us from sitting 10+ feet away (more like 7 at best), and if I wasn't on the sofa alone and couldn't sit in the middle, there was always too much presence from one speaker and it ruined my immersion. No one else noticed this of course, but I could put in some White Van Specials and they wouldn't know the difference either. Such is my curse. I wonder if it's possible to start measuring "blend distance" in speaker reviews... the distance where you begin to get a fully cohesive image from all drivers?

Sound-wise I like the tonality (the midrange driver really does help), and the dispersion is much better than the Klipsch's... but those had much stronger bass than the Signet's since the woofers were in tandem. Since I only invested a pittance in these, I may fool around and wire the upper woofer parallel with the lower one. But without knowing the crossover points I worry about a big midrange dip. I'll probably rewire one speaker and then run tones on the modded and unmodded and compare spectrums.

As far as looks, well... ugh. I'm not a fan of the "black oak" veneer on any speaker. Might do some press-on veneer to make them look better.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

Pics I have right now...

The divider between the upper and lower chambers. It actually goes at an upward slant from front to back.

Bottoms-up look from the same location. You can see the chamber extends up behind the midrange chamber.

One of the woofers. The top and bottom are identical drivers, just crossed over differently. Nice sturdy cast frame and pretty hefty magnet.

I'll get more pics tonight from home.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

The midrange:

Front profile:

Rear profile:

If the drivers are made in China, the crossovers made in china, but the box is Canadian, does that make it "Made in Canada" ? Hmmmm...

That's it for now, until I get the T-Taps I ordered and run my experiments. The cabinets on mine are 5/10 but the drivers are pristine. These things were $1200 in 1998 dollars. Worth it if you come across a pair for cheap.

 

[zieglj01]

Signet was owned by the company that also distributed the Design Acoustic speakers .... Signet was more of their higher-end line. They did make some decent/nice stuff.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

Caution be damned... we're going to try and refinish these things. So I took out the tweeter. Had to carefully chisel off the "Sonofelt" first.

Hey it's not made in China! Turns out it was made by Seas.

Some more digging and it seems that Signet used Vifa (now Peerless) woofers. I'm guessing that since the midrange has the same cast frame and similar part number it was also made by Vifa.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

WARNING: PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES AHEAD

Let's get naked girl! Take it all off!

Let me see that boo-tay!

Oh snap- you's a freak!
Whoa- you brought a friend? Looks like we're gonna party tonight!

 

[Kvn_Walker]

Stripped, sanded, ready for action!

The Bondo job I did on the damaged corner came out pretty good. Not perfect, but I'm happy with it...

Welp, all the "easy" stuff is done. Next will come the part I'm most scared of, once the veneer is nice and flat.

 

[zieglj01]

Looking good so far

 

[Kvn_Walker]

Good gawd, what a mess...

 

[Kvn_Walker]

So remember those ugly black speakers I had??

NEITHER DO I.

I am absolutely positively never doing this again... but it was a learning experience! I took in the mistakes I made on the first speaker, and veneered the second one a lot faster and more efficiently. I am really glad I went with veneer instead of vinyl wrap! The stiffness of the wood surface made it easier to hide some of the imperfections in the 22-year old MDF. Even if it was a pain in the ass the end result isn't half bad. There are a few boo-boos and jaggies, but the drivers hide all that when inserted.

Next stop... staining those sumbitches, once I get my delivery from Amazon.

 

[Gmoney]

nice lil dig bro! by the way I’m a Walker also! may the force be with you!

 

[Gmoney]

Dang! got them old boxes looking sweet! Are you gonna add any extra bracing to them on the inside? What about adding some Stuffing? Wish I had a nice man cave to have some fun like that.
I just punched your man card!

 

[Kvn_Walker]

They're already good cabinets. That hideous black vinyl wrap just had to go.

The cabinets are lined pretty thoroughly, except for the slanted plane behind the upper woofer. To be more specific, one speaker had the lining and one didn't. The glue is there but the cloth was missing. Guess I'm not the first set of prying eyes...

 

[Gmoney]

They're already good cabinets. That hideous black vinyl wrap just had to go.

The cabinets are lined pretty thoroughly, except for the slanted plane behind the upper woofer. To be more specific, one speaker had the lining and one didn't. The glue is there but the cloth was missing. Guess I'm not the first set of prying eyes...

yeah I noticed the lining in one it’s not the usual white foam you see in speakers of today. Looks like what you would see in a car under the carpets. To bad when you opened them up a nice wad of cash would’ve been nice to see people have been known to hide cash, Jewelry umm Reefer and other things in speaker boxes well at least I did but not Necessarily in that order. To this day my first wife never did find her Engagement ring that I Slipped off her finger one night when she was asleep the month before she left to go live with her new f..k buddy. Sold that ring used the money to buy me a very nice turntable.

 

[Gmoney]

WARNING: PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES AHEAD

Let's get naked girl! Take it all off!
View attachment 35493

Let me see that boo-tay!

View attachment 35494

Oh snap- you's a freak!
Whoa- you brought a friend? Looks like we're gonna party tonight!

View attachment 35495

LMAO!! lolo i just noticed the pic on one of the boxes. I’ve looked over your thread at least 5 times never noticed the pic with Tattoo lolo. Best post of audio porn to date! 100 more points on your man card!! lolo

 

[TLS Guy]

I picked up a pair of these in January for not much money (under $200). I've found precious little information on them, which tells me they were a sales flop. It does seem like the people who did buy Signet speakers loved them, though, and Stereophile had a positive review of the 2-way SL-280's. Then again, 99% of Stereophile reviews are positive, so here's your salt. .

I have a few pictures on my phone of the inside, but until I can post those, here's a pair for sale on Reverb to show for reference.

I like the build quality of the cabinet, crossover, and drivers. You can tell these weren't thrown together cheaply. Interestingly, they are indeed 4-way speakers, even though they look like may of the contemporary 3-way dual 8's out there. As the pictures I will post show, the lower woofer is isolated in the bottom half of the enclosure with a tuned port, and the upper woofer is in its own sealed space in the upper half. The upper woofer seems to be bandpassed and not low-passed. I wish I knew what the crossover points were.

These actually replaced my Klipsch RP-280F's in the living room. Those got on my nerves with the narrow sweet spot. The size of the room prevented us from sitting 10+ feet away (more like 7 at best), and if I wasn't on the sofa alone and couldn't sit in the middle, there was always too much presence from one speaker and it ruined my immersion. No one else noticed this of course, but I could put in some White Van Specials and they wouldn't know the difference either. Such is my curse. I wonder if it's possible to start measuring "blend distance" in speaker reviews... the distance where you begin to get a fully cohesive image from all drivers?

Sound-wise I like the tonality (the midrange driver really does help), and the dispersion is much better than the Klipsch's... but those had much stronger bass than the Signet's since the woofers were in tandem. Since I only invested a pittance in these, I may fool around and wire the upper woofer parallel with the lower one. But without knowing the crossover points I worry about a big midrange dip. I'll probably rewire one speaker and then run tones on the modded and unmodded and compare spectrums.

As far as looks, well... ugh. I'm not a fan of the "black oak" veneer on any speaker. Might do some press-on veneer to make them look better.

If you put the woofers in parallel then you will halve the impedance and that will change the crossover frequency.

I suspect from the look of the pictures that there is a crossover that is far too low to be passive and work properly. So I suspect to get anywhere you are going to have to bi-amp them with an electronic crossover.

If you know what drivers they are I might have a record of the driver responses and parameters, and be able to sort this out. A four way passive crossover has the odds against it to be successful. Also I wonder why that speaker was designed that way. It might have been because the impedance dropped too low to be safe.

That is a strange design and does not make a lot of sense at face value. If you know the model number of the drivers and cold write at a schematic of the crossover we might be able to improve the situation.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

If you put the woofers in parallel then you will halve the impedance and that will change the crossover frequency.

I suspect from the look of the pictures that there is a crossover that is far too low to be passive and work properly. So I suspect to get anywhere you are going to have to bi-amp them with an electronic crossover.

If you know what drivers they are I might have a record of the driver responses and parameters, and be able to sort this out. A four way passive crossover has the odds against it to be successful. Also I wonder why that speaker was designed that way. It might have been because the impedance dropped too low to be safe.

That is a strange design and does not make a lot of sense at face value. If you know the model number of the drivers and cold write at a schematic of the crossover we might be able to improve the situation.

I've spent a lot of time trying to find any technical info on these. Can't even find an online owner's manual sadly. I've stopped short of trying to contact Andy Lewis directly but even that's tempting.

The tweeter is a SEAS H464 1" metal dome. 6 ohms. Probably a custom job since I can't find any historical info on it.

Same for the mids and woofers. The number you see stamped on them is all there is. Peerless has several each of 4" midranges and 8" woofers and any of those could be descendants of these. But it's all guesswork.

If I get time this weekend I will attempt to pull and map the crossover if it can be done without damaging anything.

Any experimenting I do on my own will be easily reversible. This is a leisure project so I won't go in too heavy on it (aside from the time-intensive re-finishing).

 

[Gmoney]

@walker, need help? TLSGUY is your go to on speaker build or redo.

 

[Pogre]

Kevin you're a nut! Fun thread tho. This kind of thing is right up my alley!

 

[Kvn_Walker]

First the good... got them purtied up!

It's a Brazilian Rosewood stain. I coated the front baffle heavily, to give them a "rustic furniture" look. Once I get some rubber cement and re-apply the Sonofelt I'll be done with cosmetics.

For the bad... the woofers are 4 ohms. I just took for granted they would be 8, but I measured DC resistance today and was proven wrong. Had this been designed as a 3-way from the start they would have used 8-ohm woofers, but as TLS mentioned, this is an awkward design. Now if the bottom woofer had been 10" or 12" and actually able to put out some low bass on its own, I could see the upper driver utilized as a midbass.

That's going to really complicate things. Low-passing them in parallel will make for a tough load, especially since these will be driven by a cheap receiver. We'll see. I have to run some sweeps and guesstimate the crossover frequencies and figure out what to do from there. This was always a "what can I get for a few hundred bucks" endeavor, and I don't want to wade into deeper waters.