What effect will removing a whizzer cone have?


I am considering building a speaker based around one of several 8" "wide range", paper cone drivers which use an additional whizzer cone to extend the frequency range (Lowther, AER, etc.). However, I have never been really satisfied by whizzer cone highs in other speakers, and the interaction of the whizzer cone and the main cone always does seem to produce some upper mid and treble problems that are irritating. So I am considering adding a tweeter to the mix, not just to supplement the highs above 10kHz or so, but to replace what the whizzer cone altogether.

The obvious question is: other that cutting off the high frequencies generated by the whizzer cone, what effect, if any, will the removal of the whizzer cone have on the performance of the main driver? Will it "screw-up" the sound of the driver altogether? Might it improve the reproduction of the frequencies that the driver still produces? Since the driver was designed to have a whizzer cone, will removing the whizzer cone badly skew the frequency range of the driver (other than cutting off the highs)?

I realize that this is an impossible question to answer fully and accurately without being in reference to a specific driver, but any general notions or ideas of what would happen would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully, some knowledgeable A'Goners out there have done this type of experimentation before and have formed at least a rough idea about what is likely to happen (such as, where will he driver sans whizzer start to roll off?).

If it really isn't possible to answer without knowing the driver, I do have a pair of used Lowther DX4s, and I can get my hands on a pair of used AER MD 2Bs.

Great thanks in advance to anyone who has any knowledge they can share on this matter, or knows where I can find it.
oahuan
this is why god made woofers and tweeters....or maybe it was henry kloss...same thing.
Magfan...That's what they claimed. But I think it worked that way only for high frequencies.
isn't the breakup mode how the original OHM Walsh worked? Not as a piston but a wave traveling thru the cone?
Elizabeth...ALL cone drivers "break up" when fed a full range signal. Only the inner area of the cone and the dust cap emit the highest frequencies. The cone can be designed to break up in a predictable manner, and the breakup characteristics determine how the driver will sound... good or bad.

Advocates of single driver speaker systems claim that there is no crossover to degrade the sound, but this is not true. The crossover is a mechanical filter, and that's much harder to design and fabricate than an electronic one.
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Cutting off the whizzer gives me the creeps. I somehow correlate this to getting a circumcision AFTER infancy. Yikes!
10-26-09: Elizabeth
I have seen some paper (AES) that had shown the 'wizzer' is useless and does not actually do anything.
I would have to agree the wizzer is an archaic BS device, and cutting it off would be a blessing.
Elizabeth (Threads | Answers)

I'm staying away from Elizabeth, I don't want my wizzer cut off.
I have seen some paper (AES) that had shown the 'wizzer' is useless and does not actually do anything.
I would have to agree the wizzer is an archaic BS device, and cutting it off would be a blessing.

LOL - try telling that to Zu Audio that use a modified guitar bass player woofer and claim to make a very high end speaker!

More seriously - the wizzer cone helps reduce the directionality of the driver at higher frequencies (less beaming) - so if you don't send any high frequencies to the driver (crossover at say 4 Khz to a tweeter) then you could simply leave it in place and it won't do much harm.

If you remove it then try to weigh it and add the same weight in glue on the dust cover in order to compensate and keep the driver balanced as per the orginal design.
I believe that the whizzer simply generates a broad band of high frequency sound (noise?), and the ear "thinks" it hears in this band the harmonics appropriate for lower frequency fundamental sounds. If you remove the whizzer the speaker will have less high frequency output, but what there is will be real.
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Full range speaker manufacturers spend tons of money on R&D to get their product to be cohesive.Removing the wizzer would defeat the purpose of having a full range driver.I have no idea what it would do to the sound of the main driver.This seems like a waste of time and money to me,but,what you do is none of my business.Why not just use a conventional setup?Just my thoughts.