I bought four of these “5" Concave Paper Cone Woofer Speaker 2 Ohm “ to get the quantity price and see if they’re worth anything.                                                                                              

Experience tells me I like the sound of speakers with large motors which have tight control over the cone. These are no-name buyouts. Odd two ohm impedance. What were they designed for, maybe small automotive woofers where low impedance is common?

Anyway, I started looking around for something to stick one into to see what it sounded like. Under the workbench was an empty iced tea mix container, which I use for storing small parts like nuts and bolts. Same outside diameter as the speaker. A bit flimsy and light weight for speaker use, but what if we make it really dead? Line it with carpet glued in. Stuff it good, dense at the far end, becoming lighter toward the speaker. Cover with that indoor-outdoor carpet stuff you find in car trunks. Did that. Made a pair and hooked them up on the bench. They sounded nice. Great range, decent bass, and mids that practically jumped out and shook your hand. With EQ, bass came up strongly and treble brightened.

At this point, I started dumping nuts and bolts into other cardboard boxes, ordered four more from PE, and bought more iced tea. Visions of a stack of four in a vertical array. Wired in series for 8 ohms. A couple weeks later, glue smell is dissipating and there’s a stack of fuzzy grey cylinders.

How to stack ‘em? Since these are to be experimental pigs, sticky-back Velcro seemed like a good idea. Easy to stack, take apart, and re-arrange. A 5 ft. roll of industrial strength Velcro cost almost as much as the speakers, but there’s lots left over.

So here are the vertical stacks.

Sound. . .  .   .    Well, I have to say, a bit underwhelming.

The more of these get stacked in series, the less impact and presence there is to the mids, which is after all the strong suit of the driver, and their raison d’etre. Rewiring each stack as a 2x2 matrix with 2 in each series string, yielding a 2 ohm load helped, but not much. These sound better with only one or two speakers working and in onesies or twosies, they are terrific. Especially at $4.

So the question of whether a decent sounding speaker could be had with a flimsy but non-resonant box can be answered in the affirmative. These cans DO capture the back radiation and keep it from canceling the front wave, even on low bass. They are on the small side, but the speakers respond nicely to aggressive bass boost below resonance. Think Bose 901s. The round shape helps strengthen the box and keep it from vibrating. The metal end of the can needs damping for sure. Heavy glue and thick carpet are adequate, but probably barely so.

As for the vertical array, it’s disappointing, but that’s the way it often works out. Something of a surprise, and I’m not sure what’s going on there. Arrays are very trendy so perhaps I was just expecting too much. These drivers won’t rest, though. Maybe a MTM with a built-in subwoofer. One pair will get tried as mids in the 3-way E-V system, though the crossover will need tweaking for the 2 ohm impedance. So watch for the return of these odd 5s.