vintageHIWATTconvention.com

Hi everyone. I’m new to the forum, and have a question . I’m trying to figure out the power rating of the Fane speakers I have in my mid-1978 SE4123 cabinet, serial #8003. It’s matched with a mid-1978 DR103, serial #12705. The serial #’s on the speakers are 125161, also mid-1978. I had assumed they were 50 watts based on a number of posts I’ve seen in this forum, but then I uncovered some new posts that indicated that these might be 75 watts. I’m going to have to replace a couple of the speakers and would like to make sure I match the power ratings correctly. I’m not a pro musician by any means(weekend warrior) and not a technical wizard, so I’m just trying to do my due diligence. I’m leaning toward the Weber Thames right now, but it seems that they only come in an 80 watt version. Then again, I saw another post that seemed to indicate Weber might be able to create a 50 watt version of the speaker, so I am checking into that. Any advice, comments, etc. would be appreciated. Oh, and if I order by 12/17, I can take advantage of a 10% off Xmas sale Weber is currently running.

'125161' is a model #, not a serial number. They are conservatively rated at 50 watts each, 16Ω. These speakers are unique to 1978 as they were reportedly only sold in SE4123 cabs for a few months. Dr.HIWATT has a quad of these in a '78 cab and they seemed to be the loudest and arguably best sounding of all the old Hiwatt Fanes at the past few Vintage Hiwatt Conventions. The HI-TONE DR-F speakers are approximate clones of the 12161 Fane, but the DR-Fs are 75 watts.

Why do you want to replace any of them? These speakers should smoke the Webers by a mile.

EDIT: Also, you may want to do the 'de-fizz mod' to the '78 DR103 is it needs it and if you're skilled with a soldering iron. Detail's here: http://hiwatt.org/2_mod.html
I did this to my '78 DR103 with 1000kΩ resistors and it sounded much better with the 'normal' and/or 'brill' pre-amp volume knobs cranked...and it sounded much more like my '74 DR103.

Welcome!

It's probably more important to match the efficiency rating rather than the power handling. Since we don't have specs on those vintage Fanes, that can be tricky. What has happened to the ones you feel you need to replace? Perhaps they can be repaired instead.

For the record, could you please post the date codes from those speakers? They'll be in a ##/YR format, where "##" is the week of the year.

Dave

Date codes on speakers are 20/78(3) and 21/78(1). I first noticed the problem when I found 2 of the 4 speakers not working. By swapping around the speakers within the cabinet and then removing them and having a band mate with an ohm meter test the two in question, we found that one was just not working. I was told that in a ‘series/parallel’ speaker wiring, if one speaker of a ‘series’ is not working, the other speaker in the ‘series’ will not work either. I removed the ‘bad’ speaker to inspect, but could not see any noticeable(for my untrained eyes) reason for it not working. From another band mate: "For all practical purposes the one speaker is non-functional and will need to be replaced or reconed. (recone is the only way to repair the voice coil which has a broken winding in it. When Mike tested it with a meter, I assume it read 0 ( it did) and not a dead short."

If it were my cab, then I would pay for a re-cone or two instead of buying replacements. There are recommendations in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1102&p=9120&hilit=recone#p9120

jgmlynar wrote:Date codes on speakers are 20/78(3) and 21/78(1).

Thanks for that. To date, the only 125161's we knew of were dated 24/78. Now we at least know they produced for more than one week.

You may have already done this, but visually inspect the speaker leads on any you feel are bad. The way the vintage Fane terminals were wired, it's possible for leads to slip off the terminals if a solder gun is held there for too long.

A reading of 0 ohms does indicate a short. If your cone looks good, I would strongly suggest you try to repair that speaker. It will match much better and be worth more.

Keep us posted.

Dave