my stepdad has these old Yamaha speakers for the mid to late 80s. Not sure the model. They are floor speakers that have 15" woofers. They are pretty old because all the cones are made of paper. Each speakers has a 15" woofer, two 6" mids, and a tweeter. the tweeters and mids need replacements. The woofers may need replacements as well. They were pretty sweet when they worked.
If i wanted to fix the speakers what would i need to do? Do i need to find specs on the original parts to match them with newer similar parts? Id probably need the internal volume of the boxes as well. I really have no idea where to start and any help would be appreciated.
Whatever you do to them you will no longer have Yamaha speakers when you're done. Mating new non-Yamaha drivers to a few old Yamaha drivers through Yamaha crossovers meant for old Yamaha drivers doesn't sound like a wise idea to me. Is it really worth the investment to replace drivers when you'll have no idea what the final result will be?
what about paper tweeters though? This can be an area of really hot debate. Can a paper tweet perform as well as a plastic, metal, film, etc... driver? I know that they have a warmer sound to them, but I thought that they had more difficulty with extreme treble frequencies.
well apparently i sounded like an idiot when i mentioned paper cones being bad lol. They are work fixing for the cabinets alone. I think they are made of solid oak and a quite heavy. Would a better option be finding some modern woofers/tweeters and a new crossover and just replace all the components? I know little about fixing or diy speaker building so sorry if i come off as a little dense. lol any advise?
It's not the conventional route to have an enclosure decided upon and then go find drivers to fit that enclosure. Normally you would decide on at least the woofer since it depends most upon the enclosure and proceed from there to fit the cabinet to the driver(s). Parts Express does have facilites for retro-fitting drivers to a cabinet. Put the name "Parts Express" in a search engine and give them a call. Realize that what you will end up with might not sound at all like how you remember the Yamahas.
All drivers - tweeters, mids, woofers, etc - are designed to work with specific parameters. They have different required impedences, cabinet volumes, power handling and so on. They also vary in if they're intended to be used in sealed, ported, or open cabinets.
Then there's the crossover. Different speakers are designed to be used with different frequencies, some frequency ranges overlap different drivers.
Telling use you have an old Yahama speaker that uses paper drivers, a few different drivers, and a cabinet that may or may not be solid oak isn't enough.
If you stick just anything in there, you need to hope for the best. Quite frankly, you won't get the best. You'll end up with something halfassed that hopefully won't damage anything its connected to.
Your best bet is to try and contact Yamaha. If you have serieal numbers or part numbers from the drivers, they may be able to help you get new ones. Chances are that they won't help much if at all, and will probably try to get you to buy new speakers. If you really like the speakers, look for a forum that discusses vintage gear, like Audiokarma, or discusses DIY speakers. Even though they may not be able to help you locate direct replacements, they may be able to help you find speakers that'll work with the cabinet and help you figure out crossover points and design.
Companies like Yamaha typically don't support products that old. Some don't have any references at hand to help you out if they wanted to. I can't remember which company it was (it could have been Yamaha), but there was a guy here a while back who wanted some info on an old receiver and contacted the company. The company couldn't even confirm if they even ever made the receiver or not. The receiver was about 15 years old. It reminds me of a famous government PR line - "We can not confirm nor deny that."
"Can a paper tweet perform as well as a plastic, metal, film, etc... driver? I know that they have a warmer sound to them, but I thought that they had more difficulty with extreme treble frequencies. "
A paper cone tweeter will have more problems with dispersion than a dome or planar type drievr. That is due to the shape of the driver rather than the material. The original Advent line (and a few others) used a paper dome tweeter though it's (the Advents') response was intentionally limited to about 15kHz due to the limitations of the playback equipment available in 1967. Paper is lightweight but has a lower resonant point than metal or silk so those two materials will have less detrimental effects from resonance when used as high frequency drivers. On the other hand paper is self damping material while metal is not. I cannot see a simple paper cone/dome driver being capable of 50kHz extension due to it's inherent resonance and weight. But, that said, you would want to consider how important response to 50kHz really is given the 20kHz limit imposed on CD's.