powered old speaker

[Chris H.]

There was a powered speaker in the trunk of my 62 when I bought it. The amp is on the speaker. I have it stored somewhere.

Could this have come out of a vette? It is old.

Chris

[Joe L.]

Re: powered old speaker

Chris-----

I don't know of any older cars, including Corvettes prior to the C4 Bose era, that used a powered speaker. However, 1963-67 Corvettes used speakers that had an attached transformer. I'm not sure if C1s used such an arrangement, also.

[John P.]

Re: powered old speaker

The early wonderbar radios in both Corvettes and passenger cars used speakers with power supplies. The Coevette speaker unit is oval shaped while the passenger car speaker is rounder. Many radios are sold without the powerpack speaker so a proper speaker unit would be valuable to someone without it. A car radio can be rewired to look very much like a corvette radio but the power speaker unit is unique to the Corvette. A car unit is too big to fit. A car unit may be a good source for power pack parts.

[Joe L.]

Re: powered old speaker

John----

What years were the powered speakers used?

[John P.]

Re: powered old speaker

I know the speaker unit with power pack mounted in the font of the grill was used through the '57 production year, then I believe a speaker unit with a "transformer" was used for a number of years in the Corvette. I really don't know when the last passenger car might have had the power pack unit, I assume about the same time.

[Jack H.]

Re: powered old speaker

John has it right, the 'powered speaker' was used through '57.... But, this isn't a powered speaker, per se. This era was pre-transistor and vacuum tube technology was used to manufacture high voltage supply rails necessary to achieve the radio's seek function in addition to the supply rails for ordinary tube heater, audio drive and radio demodulation.

Behind the dash space was limited in Corvette (as well as other passenger cars), so the circuitry of the radio was divided into two chassis modules: (1) the basic radio with tuning bar indicator, volume, tone, and station control, and (2) the radio's basic power supply plus final audio drive amplifier and speaker.

Many times you'll see folks at swap meets selling the in-dash portion of an early WB radio for BIG $$$ and when the unwitting buyer gets home, he realizes he'd only purchased HALF of the radio!!!!! This is similar to Shark era radios where cramped behind dash space dictated 'chopping' the radio function into more than one chassis and cable connecting the boxes to take advantage of available behind dash space.

With a Delco part number off the poster's speaker 'find', the original application can be back tracked and considerable value might be obtained. Labels can be found not only on the outside of the speaker/pwr supply chassis but on the inside of removable chassis access panels. Good luck!!!