Time for a deep dive into my
Russian Dolls.
In another thread there was a video posted with a cabinet restoration of some Radiotehnika S-90's. From my googling, these were in production from around the late 1970s until the mid-2000's with different branding and some design variations. The pair I have are "Baltek Audio Baltic 90." Different variations I've seen all have the same driver complement and crossovers however. Some of the designs are "out there" to put it mildly. Having overload lamps, L-Pads and a response graph
all on the front baffle would have fried my synapses! I'm thankful that mine are tame and conventional. Butterface speakers- leave the grilles on.
These have a couple of glaring design flaws, one of which I finally decided to resolve. When using these, there would be a nasty port resonance at times. It sounded akin to placing a thin sheet of plastic against a vibrating object... which in a sense isn't far from the truth.
I'm quite fond of these, having owned them a few months. The bass is strong but not boomy, the mids are clear and the highs, while bright, can be adjusted to taste. I don't have measurements to prove if they're "good" speakers, but I can show they certainly aren't cheaply built. Quite the opposite, these are tanks...
Patient 1, up on the operating table:
Rear shot:
Underwear shot:
Close up of the mid/tweet. I couldn't get that midrange dimple out using the "easy" methods, but I didn't want to risk damage:
Close-up of the woofer. I've seen 21 inch woofers with smaller dust caps!
Full frontal nudity follows. All three drivers have plastic rings. For the woofer, it's primarily decorative, as the driver is held in with machine screws:
The mids and tweets are fastened in place with the same wood screws as their respective rings: