Passive sub-sat systems were all the rage in the late ‘80’s-early ‘90’s.īose came out with their AM-5 in 1987 and CSW followed with their Ensemble around 1988 or 89. The Ensembles have nice toggle switches to adjust the levels of the mids and tweeters. All of the new caps were physically larger than the originals and one 6.8uF had to be installed hanging off the side of the PCB so the board could be slid back into place. I replaced the 3 smaller ones with film, the 150 with an NPE. The crossover has 4 electrolytic caps: 2.2uF, two 6.8uF and a 150uF. SpeakerWorks has some surrounds that are probably a better fit. I 'hinged' the dust caps to shim, then glued the original DCs back in place.

Working with small surrounds is a pain and the ones I used had an inner diameter that was a tad larger than I would have preferred so there was only about 1/16' to glue to the cone. The cabinets were then sprayed with spray-on 'truck bed liner' which creates a nice black pebble finish that is somewhat reminiscent of the original Nextel. The real woofers, in the sub enclosure, have rubber surrounds.įirst the cabinets were stripped down to the primer using lacquer thinner and scrapers. And since I was working on these anyway I decided to recap them. The 'woofers' (mids, actually) have foam surrounds so those had to be replaced. There were a couple of issues with this pair: The Nextel, as shown in the first photo, was deteriorated and gummy. Both were covered in Nextel, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time but with age the Nextel turns sticky and scrapes off. The Ensemble originally came in an MDF cabinet. But with the passive sub they are really terrific.

The satellites MUST be used with the sub or they sound pretty bad. That may not be a fair comparison because the Ensemble is a 3-piece system. The Ensemble is essentially the same size as the highly touted Radio Shack Minimus 7 and in my opinion the Ensemble is superior. This time we have the smaller 'Ensemble' speaker. This 'Other Speakers' section is probably the more appropriate place. I previously wrote about the Cambridge SoundWorks Ambiance speaker here:

Cambridge soundworks ambiance