JPW Gold monitor

[stiften]

In my local thrift shop I stumbled over a seemingly nice pair of bookshelf speakers.
JPW Gold Monitor the backside told me.



There were no price tag on the loudspeakers, so I asked for the price, and if the speakers had been tested.

The man in the shop could not answer, why we rigged up a mini-amp with built-in CD player, and the speakers played... in one channel.  

"You can have them, maybe you can repair them", he said. So I took them home, and after checking for continuity and re-soldering the connections between the filter and the woofer on the faulty unit, they both make music.  



So far I've only tested then on my Beogram 1500 that has a tiny amp best suited for more effecient speakers, but the small JPW seems to be decent, although very small speakers - perhaps best suited for small rooms or effect speakers in a surround system?

Does anyone here have any experiemce with these small JPW speakers?

[ropie]

They look pretty decent, like little Rogers.  Seems they have a good reputation from a quick online search.  Nice find!  The company is still going but seems to have moved a tiny bit further West from their original Plymouth location, to Saltash.

[midrange]

The original jpw Mini Monitors were very successful speakers in Britain, and sold in large numbers. The Gold Monitors were fitted with a better tweeter, and reckoned to be a notch up. They are still considered a decent speaker. The original JPW was an interesting company. Some of their speaker models had the cabinets made in a prison! Looks a good buy.

[dauphine]

I wonder if your JPW's are the same as my pr of Gale Gold Monitor MK2's. I use them for computer sound and quite like them.

andre

[stiften]

I wonder if your JPW's are the same as my pr of Gale Gold Monitor MK2's. I use them for computer sound and quite like them.

andre

It seems, from the images I can find on the Internet, that the woofers do look similar.

I have tested the JPW speakers a bit more with some frequency-sweeps, and the mid/bass unit in the speaker, that was DOA, is clearly not as it should be.

When I play the sweep in mono and listen to the two speakers side by side, the repaired speaker buzzes here and there, so I guess it at some point in it's life has been overloaded.

 

When playing music, the buzz is most obvious on a certain record with a close-miked clarinet, so I guess I will have to either find a new woofer or use the best unit as a center speaker on the tv - or mono speaker in a little mono setup.

[stiften]

It seems that the wires from the terminals to the cone could occasionally rub the cone, making these buzzing sounds.

Now I have soldered the wires again, and the speakers do sound similar in mono.

I have now tested the tiny speakers with many kinds of music. It seems that acoustical jazz and folk music is what they are best at.

The lack of true bass is less obvious with this kind of music, and at - relatively - low volume I like the way the music is presented. These speakers were probably designed to be used with a subwoofer?

Placing the speakers close to the walls and adding a bit of bass ("1 o'clock") on the amp makes me tap my right foot, but vocals seems a tad more sibilant, than I am used to from the Sugden A48 used for the test.

With complex classical synphonic music - or rock music - the otherwise so clean image (perspective-wise) seems to break up, making the presentation gritty and spitty at high volume.

As kitchen speakers, placed in the corners, near the ceiling, the JPW Mini Monitor may work. For more focused listening they do not for me.

All the best.





 

[bluetomgold]

I wonder if your JPW's are the same as my pr of Gale Gold Monitor MK2's. I use them for computer sound and quite like them.

andre

I think the Gales were ported, whereas the JPWs are a sealed box. Otherwise quite similar, the Gale brand had been resurrected by Richer Sounds, and I think perhaps they had JPW build some speakers for them. The TDL mini monitors were also very similar, again a ported design.

I had a pair of the original JPW Mini Monitors from new, which I liked. I think they were about £60 - pretty much as cheap as real hi-fi got at the time. I later "upgraded" to the Gold Monitors and the matching passive band-pass sub as Richer were doing a deal. I never liked the Gold Monitors as much to be honest - found them a little edgy in the treble whereas the basic model with cheap mylar tweeter just sounded right. The sub was brilliant though - the package integrated really well actually sounded like a pretty serious pair of speakers.