Cleanout: Vintage 10" & 12" Speakers

I'm cleaning my workshop again! Here are three speakers I've had hanging on the beams for a while.

This first one is branded RCA but is in actuality a Jensen C10R. It sounds glorious but has some minor rattle/fartiness with low notes and a couple of small damaged spots on the cone. If you're handy with working on speakers, you can fix this -- or have it reconed. This has a ceramic magnet but it really does have "that sound." The speaker code reads Jensen (220) and made in 1961, 21st week. This came out of a 1961 RCA projector speaker cab, so there you go! It's probably rated from 10-20w or so.

Next-up is an alnico-magnet, silver-painted 12" speaker from the 1950s. I'm not sure who the maker is as the code doesn't make any sense to me. As I recall, I pulled it out of a '50s RCA/Victor cab, though. It works not-so-great and needs a recone to keep-up with the bass-register of modern amps.

I'm not sure this 6-digit code is either a speaker code or a date code -- though if it's a date code, I was definitely off on pegging the year of the cab this was from. If it's a normal speaker code, the 111 would translate to Amperex (tube-maker so...?) while the 9 would correlate to 1959. This was from a projector speaker cab so it's probably rated at 15-20w.

Icky repair to the cone, huh?

Last-up is a 1940s Magnavox 12" speaker which came out of an Ampro projector-speaker cab. It works but needs a recone to handle bass frequencies for guitar-amp use. If you're just using it for projector/listening needs or mandolin/uke range, it will probably be fine. It's Alnico-mag and very heavy-duty. I love the weird thin-fabric dust cover on the back of it.