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Mordaunt Short MS-400

G

Gurnox

Active Member
Saw a pair of these on Freecycle and thought I'd give them a go. Anyone know anything about them?

They're majestic looking things.

Edit: Just fired them up and..... Blimey. They're actually pretty good. They don't do 'loud' or 'deep', but they present one hell of a lot of detail. Oh, and they make me do the foot tappy thing too. Always a good measure.
Edit2: I'm not doing these things justice. The way they grab hold of the music is amazing.
 
EMI 13x8" eliptical (52390 GF), large soft dome mid / tweeter (possibly by Peerless), Coles 4001G super tweeter, Bass unit is very similar to the one in B&W DM3, but not exactly the same. It has a large magnet and is quite a good unit. rev electrolytic caps in crossover probably need replacing by now. Make sure that all tweeters are actually working. The Coles is often dead and sometimes people do not notice.
 
Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

I think I've got pretty lucky with these. All the drivers seem to be in very good condition. Are the caps fairly easy to replace? I'm relatively handy with a soldering iron.
 
Caps may be OK, but electrolytics that age have to be suspect. You could test the caps on a capacitance meter. Some would probably have to be removed to do this as probably in parallel with other components. Some of the MS400's have Verroboard that the components are mounted on. Just be careful not to pull up tracks accidentally or bridge adjacent tracks with solder.

The MS400 are not bad at all, but I prefer the B&W DM3 which has similar bass unit, Celestion HF1300 and the same Coles and in a larger more rigid cabinet.

Indutance/ capacitor meters can be bought on e bay quite cheaply, forget the exact cost of mine, but it was certainly less than £20 inc shipping and works very well.
 
Just looked at a MS400 crossover, seems to have only one rev electrolytic capacitor in it. It's a 8uF 50 V. Easy job to replace just that one.
 
Radfordman said:
EMI 13x8" eliptical (52390 GF), large soft dome mid / tweeter (possibly by Peerless), Coles 4001G super tweeter, Bass unit is very similar to the one in B&W DM3, but not exactly the same. It has a large magnet and is quite a good unit. rev electrolytic caps in crossover probably need replacing by now. Make sure that all tweeters are actually working. The Coles is often dead and sometimes people do not notice.
Click to expand...

I bought a minty pair of these last year. They had a 13 x 8 bass but mine had a KEF T15 and a Coles super. Sadly they were abused by parcelfarce and the cabinets were seriouly bent on the corners.
They played fine and were very interesting but unusable because of the cabinet damage. Shame they survived all these years in immaculate condition to be buggered by the postie }:-[
Still got all the minty parts, but ditched the cabs sadly.
 
Certainly unique speakers, crazy mids, and yes I got a pair with fried coles! I took most of the wadding out to get a better bass, I felt they were slightly overdamped. Caps will need changing, mine did, great with vinyl, very powerful and upfront but not over the top
 
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