Western Electric 555 field coil speaker Exc Working with frequency response curve Start Price USD 99.00 Current Price USD 4,650.00 Time Left - Bid Count 13 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Wednesday, September 03, 2008 End Time Saturday, September 13, 2008 Location Maplewood, New Jersey See more about 'Western Electric 555 field coil speaker Exc' Description Selling my prized Western Electric 555 field coil mid range large format compression driver or speaker. This is a rare legendary speaker from the golden age of audio, designed by Western Electric and Bell Telephone Laboratories. The Western Electric 555 is reputed to be among one of the best speaker driver ever. Partnered that with a Western Electric horns like the 13A or the stereo horn 16A, and you are in audio mid range heaven. The WE 555 was made in the late 1920s to the late 1930s when Western Electric dominated the audio industry for movie theaters. If you are planning to get a WE555, you will want to know it still works well after 80 years. As you can see in the attached photos which are of the actual WE 555 in this auction, you can be sure this WE555 does work 1. Speaker DCR is 13 ohms (measured with the Fluke 87). This is a nice impedance as it allows easier matching with 8 ohms or 16 ohms woofer in your design. Plus it works very well with low power single ended triode (SET) tube amps. I stress and stress low power tube amp only for WE555, as it is a very high efficiency speaker, and it is designed for a 5 WATTS/channel amplifier MAXIMUM. 2. Field coil impedance is 4.7 ohms. A 7 volts DC supply is required to drive the electro magnet. For this measurement I use an HP DC lab power supply. The WE 555 prefers and will sound best with a tube regulated DC supply, and preferably one using tungar tubes 3. Attached are a frequency response (FR) curve of this WE 555 and the measurement set up.     a. This FR curve aims to demonstrate the WE 555 is working well and sounding well. I was not trying to characterize its FR. Correctly done, I would need to mount the WE555 in a horn for better acoustic coupling and loading, Correctly done, I would have to align the microphone on axis (it is a bit off axis). here it is about 16 inches away, close enough to remove room reflections. Also I was measuring this during day time with all the cars driving by, and not at 3am.     b. The WE 555 was designed to operate between ~300Hz to 4500Hz in a WE 13A horn. Even without proper loading from a horn, the 1/3 smoothed FR curve shows that this WE555 does work well (and it does sound exceptionally clean) between 300hz to ~5Khz, although there is extension to nearly 8+Khz. There is the typical frequency response curve rise between ~5Khz to ~8 Khz, this is seen on all large diameter diaphragm speakers which the WE555 is such a design (you also see this with 12 inch midbass drivers or 5 inch mid drivers). One some of the photos, you see I use a nylon wrap to cover the WE555 horn exit, this is to protect the driver from dust or external debris. The WE555 will be shipped double boxed. It is a heavy driver, count on 25 lbs boxed for shipping. Given the market collectible value of the WE555, and we do not want this to get lost or damaged, it will be shipped air, express, by a courier like Fedex. Shipping will not be cheap. I will ship to Japan, South Korea and other select international destinations, so please ask. Winner can pay me via Paypal or via direct wire bank transfer. I will ship after verification of payment. Thank you No reserve auctionOn Sep-11-08 at 15:11:29 PDT, seller added the following information:Thanks for all the interests. I have listed shipping via air, express  as the WE 555 is a valuable collector item and I suspect you will want it to arrive safely and as fast as possible so you can enjoy it. If you are the winner, and like it to be shipped in a more cost effective way, please let me know after the bid. I will get a few shipping quotations and let you know the costs of each. It is for you to decide which method of shipping do you prefer. I will ship to France (per a memeber's question).On Sep-12-08 at 10:04:02 PDT, seller added the following information:To clarify on questions I received, this WE 555 driver is in full working condition, as the tests and measurements on it show. Place a Bid!