[Heathkit] Mohican oddball speaker question

[Philip Atchley]

Hi,

Still working on this Mohican.  I've got "most" of the electrical bugs" 
out of it now and will be doing an alignment etc shortly.  It won't be 
reassembled for a while yet though.

A friend has offered to take the cabinet down to the Auto Body Shop 
where he does some work and get the cabinet painted.  They can match the 
color etc.  He had some other Heathkit gear, Comanche/Cheyenne done and 
they look absolutely fabulous!  He's also going to polish the knobs on 
his buffing wheel for me, so the set will look nearly new (the face is 
good).  I know Heathkit had the very shiny chrome knobs and the slightly 
subdued ones.  This set has the latter, but the knobs need some work. 
His Comanche/Cheyenne knobs were the same style and look nice after he 
did them.

ANYWAY, the reason for this Email is this.  Upon removing the speaker so 
the cabinet could be painted I found it is in very poor shape.  The 
dustcover had come off, the Voice coil rubs badly and is scratchy. 
Without even trying it I know it'll sound TERRIBLE!  The speaker had 
"waterproof" stamped on the back side of the paper cone, but this one 
looks like moisture has done it's evil deed anyway.  (Should I take 
Heathkit to court over this "waterproofing" failing ;-)

The speaker is an oddball 35 Ohm oval unit.  I've done web searches 
without any luck.  While working on the radio I've been using an 8 Ohm 
speaker, sounds OK, but I wouldn't want to use it long term as it'd 
probably blow the output section of the receiver.

I can probably find an 8 Ohm speaker at the shop where I work.  I'm 
thinking of trying to find a small audio output transformer with 4, 8 
and 16 Ohm taps on the secondary.  Connecting the 8 Ohm speaker across 
the 4 Ohm tap "should" raise the 16 Ohm tap to a 32 Ohm "match". I 
should be able to find such a transformer somewhere.

Thoughts on the subject?



73 de Phil,  KO6BB