Empire Grenadier 8000P

Hi timlub,
I don't know how long Empire continued to make these particular models of speaker as the amount of information on the web seems incomplete and sketchy at best. The 1964 Empire catalog listed the Empire Royal Grenadier 9000 with a 15" downward firing woofer in what appears to be an acoustic suspension design and the iconic external gold colored midrange and tweeter. It also showed the Empire Grenadier 8000 with a 12" downward firing woofer in what appears to be a vented design enclosure with the same iconic external gold colored midrange and tweeter. You are right in that they both had a screen mesh around the bottom of the cabinet for the woofer. In an ad from 1966 and what I think is an excerpt from the 1967 Empire catalog I see the Empire Royal Grenadier 9000M and the Empire Grenadier 8000P. The 9000M appears to be basically unchanged cosmetically from the 9000, but the 8000P now has a fluted column design as opposed to the smooth column of the 8000 from 1964.

There seem to have been other models like the 7500, 7000, 6500, etc. including the very unique Neptune speaker that came later and at a lower price point. They all continued with the downward firing woofer configuration and front mounted midrange and tweeter, but looked entirely different. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information regarding a clear timeline with all the models from Empire's beginning to the end of their run.

When I was a kid in the 1960's, I only knew one person (my next door neighbor, who was a lawyer) who had a pair of Empire Royal Grenadier 9000's, with the marble top. Looking at the original price and adjusting for inflation a rough calculation would put the cost of a pair of Empire Royal Grenadier 9000's from 1964 at approximately $2400.00 in today's money.

I did find something about those ports on the Empire 8000P's. I'm now changing my mind and believe they were for more than packing and shipping. I found an old ad for them from 1966. It was on a French audio collectors website (of course it was all in French, but I understood the pictures), but the ad was in English. It made the following statement.

"Its exclusive dynamic reflex stop system allows you to adjust the bass and treble response to suit your individual room acoustics"

The crossover adjustment on the bottom is marked only for "High Frequency Control". Low, medium and high. So it looks like the only way to adjust the bass, would be to change the woofer load by removing some or all of the vent plugs or leaving them all in. There are six ports on each cabinet and right now I have four of the six ports plugged on each. Mainly because I only have 9 plugs total as the remaining 3 were missing. 

I also made at least one mistake in one of my ramblings above. The other Empire speaker I was trying to think of was the Jupiter, not the Neptune. I knew it was one of those planets! ;-) The cabinet looked like the head of "Robert" the robot from the old Gerry Anderson kids show Fireball XL5! Very unique!

I really like so much of the old equipment from the "golden era of audio" and before.

Regards,
Vintage_heath

Thanks everyone for the great information part of the discussion is taking them apart how is that achieved thanks for any help you can get does anybody have a manual on these things ?

Thanks again

Hi greystereoman,

I don't have a manual, but have rebuilt the crossovers in my pair of 8000P's. Everything is accessed through the bottom. So flip one upside down and take out the four screws. The wooden bottom will come off. Be careful of the golden grate as the edges are sharp and can damage the finish or the woofer. The wires from the crossover switch will need to be unsoldered. Keep track of where they go. The wires go through the edge/frame of the woofer. Undo the 4 studs and remove the woofer being careful to feed the wires from the switch you disconnected through the holes. Disconnect the woofer keeping track of which wires connect to it. Some fiberglass sound deadening material is stapled over the crossover. Remove the staples and the sound deadening material. There you will find the crossover components. Two inductors and a number of capacitors. You will need to replace all of the caps as they are guaranteed to be bad by now. You should be able to look down the enclosure following the wiring inside and see the mid-range and tweeter. I have a schematic of the crossover with values for all components and all the internal wiring and even ran some LTSpice simulations of the crossovers and generated a nice plot. Unfortunately, I don't see how to attach this information to this post as they are PDF's or JPEG files on my computer. Hope this information helps.

Happy New Year!

Hello,

I just picked up a pair of Grenadier 6000's.  The tweeter and midrange of one of them comes in and out.  I need to open up the speaker cabinet to take a look.  You mentioned that you have a schematic of the internal wiring.  Would it be possible to send me the PDF through email?  I dont' see a way to send you a private message.

Thanks,

Fortino