Realistic System Seven

I finally put together the stereo that I always wanted as a kid a Realistic System Seven.

The Realistic STA-7 was designed to work with the Minimus 7 speakers. A nice sleek unit rated at 10 watts per channel.

I picked up this unit and had to replace the dial bulbs and the stereo bulb. I also found the screw speaker terminals to be a pain so I installed proper banana plug terminals. The pots all needed a cleaning to get the scratch out of the controls.

I changed out the Minimus 7 speakers from a 2nd order crossover on the tweeter and the natural roll off of the woofer to a 1st order on both drivers. I like the sound of the Minimus 7's this way.

Click here for the Realistic catalog from 1980 go to page 18.

More Mini Speakers : Minimus 7's

I keep stumbling across mini speakers with a pair of version 1 of  this famous little Radio Shack speaker, the one made in Japan with the metal baffle plate on the tweeter. By most accounts these are the best of the models.

They are pretty simple little speakers with a 2nd order crossover for the tweeter of which I replaced the 4.7uf cap with a film cap.

The woofer rolls off with no crossover, which most people think in the Achilles heel of this speaker. There is plenty of information on the net in regards to rebuilding the crossover of which I might try.

They are much brighter than the Transonic mini's that I featured earlier and side by side I tend to listen to the Transonics more than the Minimus 7's. Stack the two sound pretty good together.

I also have a pair of Koss Dyna-mite 65's that are waiting a re foam and will be featured then. All this will eventually lead to a mini speaker challenge.