First, a few notes worthy of mention.  The veneer hasn't been steamed in a mold so it has a wavy appearance.  What surprised me was that the voice coil doesn't rub.

There was no spider available here so I had to make one with cardboard and similar in shape to the original phenolic spider.

The voice coil isn't aluminum, it's copper.  The aluminum coil has a dcr of 8.3W and the copper coil is 11.0W.  This wasn't considered to be of much importance other than the difference in voltage applied to deliver the same power. The nominal impedance of the aluminum coil is 8.6W at 300hz to 500hz and the copper coil is 11.8W within the same band. However, the inductance of the aluminum coil is 0.26mH and the copper coil is 0.62mH.which may be the major reason for the slight roll-off in the upper register.  Another is the cone material.  The paper, being 60 years or older is dry and brittle which will react easily to traverse waves through the cone which can also exacerbate cone break-up.  The wood cone, other than being new, has a grain which runs in one direction. In a cone which is circular, traverse waves through the cone will be damped when traversing perpendicular to the grain, as shown in A.  This effect will decrease as the angle of the traverse wave deviates from the perpendicular, as shown in B.  In a relatively uniform medium like paper, the traverse waves will propagate in a circular manner from the apex to the circumference.

Photo 0

Comparing these two photos, the Super 8 (above) has one seam in the cone.  This caused the cone to warp a little.  Perhaps if the seam had been along the grain or perpendicular to the grain, the warp may have been symmetrical.   See photos 10, 11 and 12 HERE.

In the photo below, there are 2 seams in the cone, one at AA and another at BB.   They are NOT diametrically continuous; there is no point in trying to theorize or guess the reason(s) why.  Suffice it to say that this cone is perfectly conical in shape. just like a molded cone; it may have been steamed in a mold.  This wood cone unit was used in the EMPYRE look alike.

Photo 00

These 2 Photos have been labeled as  0 and 00 because that was easier than renumbering the sequence of all the others.  The insertion of these two photos was an after thought.

The tweeter seems to be more to the left. This is caused by the camera's being tilted.  The two screws of the wood cone unit are not directly at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock but rotated slightly counter clockwise.

The upper box is marked where the 2 long edges contact the top of the lower box, which is also marked to reference the front of the upper box.  By rotating the upper box 180 degrees and aligning the marks, the other speaker is now extremely close to the same position as the previous one.  This was found to be easier than moving the mic which has to be repositioned and measured.

Photo 2

Impedance   RED=wood;  GREEN=original

The squiggles in the red trace may be due to the fact that the cone's annulus isn't glued to the basket and the spider is cardboard which I had to make.  If the cone jiggles or wiggles in the gap, so will the voice coil. Since there was no sign of its rubbing the pole piece or top plate, well enough was left alone. It was a delicate balance getting that coil centered and vertically aligned.  Even shimmed prior to clamping the annulus, it rubbed after removing the shim.  I think one can see where that went. 

Pink(original) & Lt Blue(wood) sweep       Red(original) & Blue(wood) gated sweep

The red and blue traces stop around 300hz due to the gating process not being able to get a good sample due to the arrival of the first reflection before the sample could be taken from the incident wave.

The 10dB difference is quite audibly noticed.  In fact, it's quite radical.

FFT pink noise RED=wood; GREEN=original

These pink noise traces are similar to the those of figure 2.  They should be.

FFT pink noise RED=wood; GREEN=original; YEL=red increased to green's level to show similarity between the curves.

There is a 10dB difference between their sensitivities.  This curve shift is done mathematically by CLIO.

FFT pink noise RED=wood; GREEN=original; YEL=original increased to red's level

correction

FFT pink noise RED=wood; GREEN=original BLK=red increased to green's level and treble boost to show similarity between the curves.  Note the red & yellow high frequency roll-off above 4khz.  The treble boost only  helped little because the Adcom treble circuit starts around 7khz, whereas most start closer to 2khz.  This curve shift is done mathematically by CLIO.

The black trace is a little closer to the green one here than the yellow is to the green in figure 4.

I can understand the higher distortion result here looking at the spectrographs compared to  figure 7

Figure 7  ORIG 400hz   1.31% THD+N

but what I can't understand the higher distortion result here because this spectrograph looks much like figure 9 on the right.

Figure 9  ORIG 3000hz   2.42% THD+N

The Usual Suspects

The wood cone unit was intended as an experiment, hence the taped annulus.  As a mid-range covering 800hz to 5khz, it worked fine for its few hours of use.

The unit on the right is an all original Super 8 FS/AL.  Well, so was the one on the left; the original cone and coil assembly is safely tucked away.

There are two separate chambers of about 0.6 ft^3 stuffed.

The terminal board and SPDT switch to switch the amplifier between the two speakers.

As for the critters, let's not go there.

The tape recorder used to record the sound from each speaker using a 1950's Shure mic.  For some reason, my two lab mics didn't work well here.  The audio track was then fed to a computer in another room via a 25' long cable.  I tried Bluetooth several months ago but it couldn't penetrate the walls.

Below the reel to reel, a TEAC  X-1000, of which there are two and both with new heads there are 2 AKAI GX280-D, 2 AKAI GX4000D and 7 REVOX A77's, 1 full track, 3 half tracks, 2 of which are high speed and 3 quarter tracks, all with new heads and restored.

Below the recorder is a 1950's EICO HF60 pre-amp which drives one of two EICO HF30 power amps, restored. Te drives a Briggs' Wharfedale 3-way system I've had since 1957.  Then, an ADCOM GFP565 pre-amp driving an ADCOM GFA555 power amp.  there are several of these ADCOMS here, all original and all working. There have been a lot of shopping sprees on the bay.

Next is an AC switched power distribution box, A TASCAM CD-500 CD player, 3 NADY PEQ5B 5 band parametric equalizers.  There are a couple of hangar queens also.  Last, but not least, a Behringer FBQ6200 stereo 31 band graphic equalizer.  There's a Behringer DEQ2496 in another audio room.

Notes On Wood/Paper Cone Comparison Recording

First, please excuse the slight hum. It's probably coming from the old Shure dynamic mic which dates to the 50's. I'm surprised it works.

The mic was placed about 12 feet from the two speakers. They are first order bandpass filtered at 800hz and 5000hz. Since they are Wharfedales, they're intended for mid-range units in a 3-way. The Wood cone speaker has a copper voice coil that I wound; the paper cone speaker is an all original Super 8 FS/AL with an aluminum voice coil. That unit was intended for use in a 2-way because of it's slightly higher range.

The equalization mentioned in the recording is only a volume increase via a parametric equalizer since the wood cone is 10dB less sensitive than the original FS/AL. Also, there's a slight equalization boost of about 2dB in the passband of about 1.3 octaves and centered around 4.5kHz. That covers the high end from around 2khz to 6khz. All other 4 bands of the equalizer are bypassed.

A SPDT slide switch was used to switch the amplifier to each speaker. This was done in conjunction with bypassing the equalizer when switching to the paper cone unit. It took a little practice to get that done seamlessly.

There is a subtle difference between the two and I do mean subtle. It is more pronounced here than in the recording; the difference being masked by the microphone quality or lack thereof. Also, in the first song, there seems to be a slight volume decrease from the paper cone. This is most likely due to a slight misadjustment of the equalizer volume control which is switched out when the equalizer is bypassed.

The music file can be played here.   MUSIC FILE

F.Y.I.  The first song is '57 Chevrolet by Billie Jo Spears. (1977)   Gawd, she passed away in 2011. All the Greats are going, going. .....

The second is the theme song from the movie, Desert Hearts. (1985)