Vintage Mind Blower speakers???

So, you think I've been fooled, and that I think Mind Blowers were better than they really are? Well son, it's never a good idea to spout off about something you know nothing about. If you've never actually heard a set of Mind Blowers you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Maybe your subwoofers have damaged your brain with all the thumping rap crap you've been playing? But one thing is glaringly obvious, if you'd put someone or something down without any knowledge of the subject you're talking about, then you're disrespectful as well as narrow minded. Maybe one day you're grow up and learn some manners. Have a nice day.
so i guess replying with a joke and useful observation about non-confirmation bias is worthy of you doing exactly what you say not to do in your post. i wasn't disrespectful at all yet you were, typical uneducated piece of trash.

 
i remember my first experience with hi-fi, my uncle had a quadraphonic system in his small living room in his shotgun house small living room probably 12'x14'. i still have very fond memories of how great it sounded. I guarantee if i was able to time travel and was in that room and listen to a song and then walk into my living room now i would be blown away at how much better my system sounds now. If those 6x9's were so incredible they would still be in production and used as reference now and would probably have been bought by oem's etc. Your memories are clouded just like your neanderthal reaction to criticism about it.

 
So, you think I've been fooled, and that I think Mind Blowers were better than they really are?
Very probably. Technology has come an awful long way and the way humans perceive and remember sound is wildly inaccurate (and actually quite an interesting phenomenon). The first time I had a sip of my dad's beer at a Bruins game it was the most amazing thing ever.... Of course Budweiser is horse ****, so unless they changed the recipe I'll suspect my memory as being in error. Most of the nostalgia is good for just that, nostalgia.

Also it seems you are very narrow minded and underestimate the experience and variety of installs and equipment some of us have had. With modern sound processing and more importantly the ability of the average consumer to measure with absolute precision, plenty DIY car audio hobbyists get true reference quality/level sound in their cars. What you remember was probably great in their day and all, but NOBODY had anything close to studio quality sound in their cars before probably the mid 90's.

Perhaps before YOU comment on things you don't understand, go out to a show and sit in some real competition tier sound quality cars. Nothing like it short of the demo room in a high end home theater shop. As great as your memory says things were back then, the technology simply was not there, nor the decades of practical experience of extreme autists pushing the boundaries of install techniques to allow what we can do today. Some hood rat's trunk rattling when they drive by you at the gas station is not an accurate representation of most folks on this forum or the state of the industry/hobby in general.

 
Well I see the argument sill goes on. Anyway I'm still looking for a dead set as I still want to tear into them and see if I can reproduce them. I also would like to bench test the amps on my audio analyzer. About the only time consuming part would be winding those interstage transformers. Would have to tear those transformers apart to be able to duplicate them. If you have a set with just blown speakers, it is easy to remove the amps, carefully drill and tap the magnets on your favorite replacement speakers and attach the amps as I did once to a set of Tri-axels. After rolling my 69' Roadrunner on the roof I built boxes and stuck them in the back of my Blazer. Too bad I let them go with the Blazer when I sold it. There is something to say about certain pieces of vintage audio, unless you heard it you may not believe it. My latest stereo build is a transistor power amp. I took an heatsinked output array from a vintage 70's stereo receiver and coupled it to a driver board from Rod over at Elliot Sound, and ended up with a real 90w per channel home stereo amp. Good sound should not require 1000's of watts. Running through a set of 35 year old 3 way's with 15" woofers, well my friends can't believe how well old school transistors (and Vacuum tubes as I build those also) sound compared to their modern amps and speakers. Not saying it is better, just that you can obtain really good results with old school components. It's all in engineering. We had nothing else to compare the Mindblowers with back then as good car audio was just coming of age.

 
The problem with ANY car stereo system from the 1970’s is the source. All there really was, was cassette and 8 tracks and the radio. True hi-fi sound is not possible with those.

Did those ‘mind blowers’ sound better than most other car stereos from the time? probably.

Would they keep up with a decent modern aftermarket stereo now? Nope.

 
Well I see the argument sill goes on. Anyway I'm still looking for a dead set as I still want to tear into them and see if I can reproduce them. I also would like to bench test the amps on my audio analyzer. About the only time consuming part would be winding those interstage transformers. Would have to tear those transformers apart to be able to duplicate them. If you have a set with just blown speakers, it is easy to remove the amps, carefully drill and tap the magnets on your favorite replacement speakers and attach the amps as I did once to a set of Tri-axels. After rolling my 69' Roadrunner on the roof I built boxes and stuck them in the back of my Blazer. Too bad I let them go with the Blazer when I sold it. There is something to say about certain pieces of vintage audio, unless you heard it you may not believe it. My latest stereo build is a transistor power amp. I took an heatsinked output array from a vintage 70's stereo receiver and coupled it to a driver board from Rod over at Elliot Sound, and ended up with a real 90w per channel home stereo amp. Good sound should not require 1000's of watts. Running through a set of 35 year old 3 way's with 15" woofers, well my friends can't believe how well old school transistors (and Vacuum tubes as I build those also) sound compared to their modern amps and speakers. Not saying it is better, just that you can obtain really good results with old school components. It's all in engineering. We had nothing else to compare the Mindblowers with back then as good car audio was just coming of age.
Dragon Breath makes a good point about the music source of those days. Definitely a very weak link for 12V audio.

As far as amplification, I suspect there's plenty of 30 year old amps (or older) that would sound just the same as anything today. The technology to make a flat playing low (at least inaudibly low) distortion amp is very old at this point. There's even some rather antiquated speakers that hold their own quite nicely.

That all said, some of these nostalgia guys really need to check out the state of the art. There simply is no way 70's stuff is better by any measure beyond efficiency, but these days power is super cheap and loudspeakers have evolved to take advantage of this.

This thread gets necro'd about once or twice a year so if anybody ever sees them or buys some they'll probably wind up here.

 
The problem with ANY car stereo system from the 1970’s is the source. All there really was, was cassette and 8 tracks and the radio. True hi-fi sound is not possible with those. Did those ‘mind blowers’ sound better than most other car stereos from the time? probably.

Would they keep up with a decent modern aftermarket stereo now? Nope.
This x 100. Theres no way dinosaur technology with low bitrate and zero tuning features can even come close to what we have nowadays readily available for cheap let alone being compared to our recent state of the art technology.

 
I am 60 years old now I used to have a pair of mind blower speakers you had to have a power wire going to the speaker because each speaker had its on amplifier there was nothing in the day that can keep up with these speakers unless you had a very powerful amplifier speaking of today's standard everything now is Chinese the only difference is they make it smaller now

 
I had a set of these in my first car. A 69 Dodge Coronet 440. I had the Pioneer Supertuner cassette with the round dial. They were amazingly loud for a 6x9. I'm guessing they were built like a pro audio speaker. I say this because I didn't know anything about pro audio then but I have heard a lot of it lately and have some myself. I bought them at a local record store/stereo shop. They were a lot like a good 6.5 pa speaker would sound today. The amps couldn't have been too powerful but it wouldn't take that many watts to get loud. They also did seem to project sound a long way. From 30 or 40 yards away you could hear them clearly. I can't speak exactly about sound quality as a lot of time has passed and memory is a funny fleeting thing. I have scan speak 6004's, 10f's and ES-06's in my truck on the new soundstream ref amps from a few years back and a Dayton HO 12 on a Zapco 750.2 bridged. I can tell you I can turn off the sub and the mind blowers would be very pale in comparison to just the three way. But I'll never forget the smile on my face when I got those mind blowers hooked up the first time !

So I feel I can know how advanced and how good my equipment is today but still get a big kick out of my memories of the mind blowers.

 
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