VINTAGE TOA SPEAKERS TOA RS-20 PA SPEAKER SYSTEM

VINTAGE TOA SPEAKERS
TOA RS-20 PA SPEAKER SYSTEM
HIGH QUALITY SPEAKER SYSTEM MADE IN JAPAN
PROFESSIONAL SOUND SPEAKER SYSTEM
THE TOA RS-20 IS A COMPACT, 2 WAY SPEAKER SYSTEM INCORPORATING FOUR 12 CM ( 5 INCH ) DIAMETER WOOFERS
AND A SMALL RADIAL HORN COUPLED WITH A PEIZO DRIVER IN A SEALED ENCLOSURE - PERFORMANCE IS OUTSTANDING
FIRST LAUNCHED 1981
FEATURING WIDE TIGHTLY CONTROLLED DISPERSION EXTENDED FREQUENCY RESPONSE
EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH POWER CAPACITY AND HIGH EFFICIENCY
EACH CABINET SIZE
HEIGHT 44.5 CM
WIDTH 34.5 CM
DEPTH 26.6 CM
EACH SPEAKER CABINET IS INSTALLED WITH FOUR WOOFERS AND 1 RADIAL HORN TWEETER
SPECIFICATIONS
ENCLOSURE : SEALED TYPE
SPEAKERS EACH UNIT 4 X 12 CM ( 5 INCH ) DIAMETER WOFFERS
EACH UNIT 1 X RADIAL HORN COUPLED WITH A PIEZO DRIVER
8 OHMS
400 WATTS MAXIMUM INPUT
SENSITIVITY : 95 dB 1W/1M
FREQUENCY RESPONSE 90Hz - 20kHz
FINISH : BLACK LEATHERETTE
FRONT GRILL : BLACK JERSEY KNIT
EACH SPEAKER WEIGHT 13.4 KG

[@SpeakerFreak95]

Those are pretty neat speakers. I'd like to find a pair.

[@chillvideos5638]

How does this thing work I have one I use it with my phone but it sounds so low

[@TheSparkyDrummer]

Long shot, but what kind of speaker wire do these use? We found an old toa board and not sure what speaker wire to use.

[@GHETTOBLASTERSOUL]

What size amp are you using? How many watts?

[@dynadude56]

I located one unit in a pawn shop and use it for guitar with a low watt head. It sounds killer. Do you have any idea what the latches on the boxes are for? Just wondering if there is some kind of travel cover that snaps on to protect the cones.

[@cswayzeUT]

Yes, I have these speakers and the latches are for a hard cover that hooks on. I have had mine since 1984 and they sound great. The speakers have outlived the amp that recently died (tubes) and I'm having difficulty getting the speakers to work on the same level with more modern mixers. At least I think that's the problem.

[@haroldwitham2038]

Front cover

[@randolphpatterson5061]

At about the same time as you were making & posting this video, I came upon an old pair of TOA p.a. speakers which needed repair. Mie are a different configuration that yours. You have a pair of RS-20's. They're rated at 400 watts of "continuous program power". This is misleading, and my guess is that this would translate to being able to handle half that much power. Naturally if those power ratings weren't so misleading, I wouldn't have to be guessing. You want to drive these with an amp that can put out a maximum of around 300 RMS at 8 ohms per channel, but then you have to run the amp at a lower setting. This keeps the amp from burning up, and this is how it's always done by pro sound companies who work on major tours. Amps are costly, speakers are cheap by comparison. Yours should work well with amps that can put out as much as about 300 watts per channel at 8 ohms per channel. It happens that I do custom restorations & mods on old tube amps & other vintage gear, but these speakers have so far gotten the best of me, with no completion in sight. The panel on the back of each cab has 6 jacks, so that the drivers have an in & parallel/through for full range using the speaker's internal 3-way passive crossover, and a set of hi & lo inputs & outputs for biamping (high in, high out, low in, low out). In several ways, this is a rather sorry old pair of unpowered speakers that have a lot wrong with them. The jacks are all PCB mounted and are the cheapest & thinnest plastic ever produced. They had broken apart & come loose from the internal circuit board, and little pieces of them were laying inside the cab when I first opened it. The connections on the crossover PC boards had overheated & melted away, leaving several of the components & some longish connector wires hanging loosely inside, with no immediate way to determine where they're supposed to go. TOA's website states that parts & schematics for this model are no longer available. These cabs each contain a woofer, a midrange loudspeaker, and a pair of tiny velocity drivers & horns. Factory printing on the horns says that they can handle only 5 WRMS per driver, for a total of 10 watts (into two horns) per cab. I don't know the individual ratings of the mid & the woofer, but the rear panel says 120 WRMS max, in full-range mode. I have to assume that in biamp mode, part of the crossover is still passively dividing power between the horns & mids, but that the woofer can then be fed with lo frequencies from a separate power amp. I can't seem to find many power amps these days that are small enough to use with these cabs. The proper match of a speaker rated at 120 watts EMS will be an amp that has a rated RMS output of between 150 and 200 watts RMS at max. My guess on these is that someone fed them way too much power until shit started to break down, or maybe that the broken input jacks had something to do with the failure. I'd like to believe that most of the components themselves might still be serviceable and that I'd only need to figure out how to properly wire the crossovers back together and install some good jacks. I don't intend for these to ever be used in biamping mode, so I hope to just eliminate that option as I do the work. I think it's ridiculous that TOA would ever recommend biamping these old wimpy boxes. For one thing, The horns & the mid drivers would probably blow out, if they were driven with much more than 40 or 50 watts. The woofer might handle 80 watts, or it might not. I did a lot of research initially, but the job was so complicated that I set it aside until just today. All I've been able to find out is that the crossover frequencies are supposed to be 1kHz & 10kHz. I'll pass along that I wouldn't expect to see top-shelf construction & components inside your own two cabs. When I opened these up, I cringed at how poorly they were constructed. Just take care of yours and don't run them with too much power, be gentle with the jacks, and maybe you'll be okay for a good long time. Maybe that's why we don't see newer versions of these TOA speakers in the music outlets these days. They sounded good enough when first introduced, if not pushed too hard, but construction-wise, they were basically outclassed by every other major manufacturer. Other 3-way 15" cabs could handle three times the power, and could provide much more coverage for larger crowds. This is a speaker cab with a 15" woofer, but which can only handle a paltry 120 watts. It's the larger of one other similar model which has a 12" woofer and only one horn per cabinet. I would assume that the smaller version is limited to even less power than the specimens I'm dealing with. In practical terms, not very many working musicians are gonna want to be constantly hauling something around that's bigger & heavier than it should be, especially if it's a weak, wimpy speaker that people will have a hard time hearing in the first place. It seems like you've already had a far better experience with your new speakers. If I ever finish the ones I have here, I just may get back atcha,

[@quananginh9446]

recorded sound, not how these speakers sound live

[@Grggeorge]

Seriously?