I don't know how many people have seen the Drivers that go into the Wilson X-1 units but they look an aweful lot like Focal drivers to me....anybody know who builds them?

 

Im pretty sure some are JMlab (focal). A friend of mine that use to sell wilson told me they where.. I dont think the mid is though. Next time i see him i will check.

Sense JMlab doesnt custom build (From what i have been told) they should be off the shelf drivers.

[ November 25, 2003, 09:35 PM: Message edited by: chev2 ]

 

Check out this quote from Sept 2003 Stereophile. It will answer the original poster's question.

The 1" Focal titanium-foil, inverted-dome tweeter and 7" ScanSpeak midrange driver used in the WATT 6, both built to Wilson's specs and further modified at the factory, have been carried over to the 7. A new Wilson-spec'd, ScanSpeak-supplied 8" woofer with a rubber surround replaces the foam-surround Dynaudio drivers used in earlier Puppys

[ November 25, 2003, 09:44 PM: Message edited by: KillerGrand ]

 

After a little more research I found out what the drivers in the X-1 are (also quoted from Stereophile):

Drive-Units: Both woofers are made by the French company Focal specifically for the Grand SLAMM. (If sold on the consumer market, these units alone would cost upward of $1000/pair.) They both feature a diecast chassis and have the same type of very large magnet and motor system. The high-power motor coils (2kW short-term) are wound on 3"-diameter Kapton formers—Kapton withstands very high working temperatures—and are ventilated to improve long-term thermal dissipation. The woofers use a distinctive composite, ventilated-magnet design. The pole pieces are chromed, while the high-intensity magnetic flux required for the target sensitivity is achieved by using an array of smaller ferrite magnet rings, their red-painted finish lending them a distinctive appearance.
The cones are made of a glass-fiber-reinforced pulp impregnated with a catalyzed resin, and are both rigid and pistonic over the required frequency range. Placed uppermost on the baffle, the 12" driver has an additional surface treatment to damp cone resonant modes, since in terms of its natural response and position in the stack, it reaches further into the low midrange than the 15" unit. The edge suspensions are foam half-roll surrounds of high mechanical "Q."
These are low-loss drivers, with high electrical damping and consequently great electromagnetic control (high Qm and low Qts, a highly desirable if expensive combination). Their corrugated spiders are surprisingly stiff; these are no "soft," long-throw units. Instead, their motor design is directed toward linear control under high-power excitation, while their fundamental resonances are matched to the requirements of bass-reflex loading. By using two differently sized bass units, sharing a common enclosure and vent, the usual single, sharp port resonance peak is broadened, extending its range and smoothing the response both in the port range and in the upper enclosure-resonance range (footnote 2).

Given the high power capacity of the bass pair, the choice of midrange driver was critical. In addition to the usual requirements for response smoothness, low coloration, and transparency, the X-1's midrange also had to be efficient, dynamic, and remain linear under high power inputs. To meet these demands, two 7" drivers, custom-made for Wilson by Dynaudio, are operated in parallel. Their high sensitivity is reinforced by a double-magnet system, 2.83V driving the pair to 96dB at 1m in the upper midrange. These drivers use rigid pressed-steel baskets and high-power 1.5" alloy voice-coils with dense "Hexacoil" windings. Copper shading rings and caps minimize magnetic third-harmonic distortion. The polypropylene cones are flared BBC-style, mineral-loaded to improve both rigidity and damping, and suspended on natural rubber surrounds.

Much development has gone into the new 1" tweeter built by Focal for Wilson Audio. It has a double magnet to raise its sensitivity to an all-time high for a direct-radiator type of 96dB. While the WATT 3 used a fiberglass material for its distinctive inverted dome (not Kevlar, as is commonly stated), the new version of this tweeter uses titanium. This metal's great stiffness helps push the primary resonance up to 23kHz from the 16kHz of the earlier fiberglass type. Now the intrinsic response is essentially flat to 20kHz at the greatly increased sensitivity.

The new, highly stable synthetic suspension is fitted with a small half-roll termination to control sub-harmonic rocking. Wilson has also fine-tuned the viscosity of the ferrofluid cooling medium in the gap, as well as the size and treatment of the air volume behind the dome. A tapered hollow pole leads to a sealed rear chamber within the ferrite magnet rings. The 1" ambience tweeters are single-piece titanium-dome units sourced from Audax, chosen for their good performance in the final audible treble octave.

 

So i was right about everything but the custom driver thing.. I believe the focal drivers are off the sheilf drivers, but the scans are custom (Scan does custom work). With the amount of marketing spin, and accuracy (More like in-accuracy) of mags i wouldnt doubt it.

[ November 25, 2003, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: chev2 ]

 

Actually after going through the scanspeak website.. the midbass looks like a vifa driver.. Scan and vifa are made by the same company, "Danish Sound Technology".

 

Yea, I found a pretty cool website actually, that has hundreds of reviews on just about speaker you can imagine and I read that bit of info that KillerGrand posted.....I also found another cool speaker that Wilson is building....the X2. Looks pretty sweet...Wilson Audio has actually done their own custom work to the Focal drivers and of course there's the Scan-Speak drivers that are used also....there's a pretty detailed cut-away picture of the insides of the X-1 too.

 

Yes they are. Add in perless.

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