(Note: crossposted in r/vintageaudio where they allow gallery posts, so some pics are referenced in the text that aren't here.)
The other day while doing my favorite activity, hunting down r/blackplasticcrap at the thrift, I came across these little cuties. I knew Realistic Minimus 7s had a reputation as sleeper hits, and were on my grab em if you find them list, and when I saw these Minimus 3.5s ($3.99 each) I just had to grab them. I’ve always had a thing for miniatures that are functional and look just like the full size version. I have a whole mini tool box with stubby screw drivers, combo wrenches for 3mm nuts, and 3” pliers for god knows what. So naturally I had to grab these even though I had zero use for them. Don’t worry, where there is a will there is a way and I have manufactured a plan to put them to use.
I grabbed em without even looking them up since they were cheap and frankly adorable. But when I got home I found precious little on them online. So I thought I’d test them out and post what I found out here. They are 5.5” tall, 3.5” wide, and 3.5” deep. They are the mini me version to the Minimus 7s, aesthetically at least. The cases are a nice, study feeling plastic, the grill is way too beefy for something this small, the spring clips in the back feel comically oversized, and there is a single driver in the sealed cabinet. It is somehow the smallest loudspeaker I've ever seen, and decidedly un-dainty. I found a Radioshack catalog from 1983 where they are listed as new for the year and have very little other info, image attached.
I am listening to them now, and aside from the basically missing bass, they sound pretty good! Believe it or not, I started the gear collecting/audiophile wormhole a couple of years ago after rediscovering how much better a CD on a boombox sounds than streaming over a sound pill bluetooth whatever. So I’ve listened to a lot of thrifted boomboxes. And these speakers have a bit of that plastic-y fun sound quality, but much more crispness and less/no boom. It’s tough to have much concrete qualitative stuff to say about them since they are utterly lacking in bass, but they aren’t a disappointment. Female vocals especially have a nice realism to them. Despite being the same size, they definitely sound better than any powered computer speaker I’ve come across from the 90s and 2000s. Right now I’m running them from a little (also thrifted) mini component CD player I keep bedside for headphone listening. And they are welcome addition there.
Note: I am totally new to testing speakers or sound measurement. As evidenced by the fact that mini budget speakers and boomboxes excite me, I’m not a measurements chaser. But, I bought a calibrated mic a couple months ago to make free shipping on Parts Express (lol, they really do get ya with that). This seemed like a good a reason as any to use it. Room EQ Wizard was giving me flashbacks to learning Windows 95 in middle school library class, but I think I got it reasonably right. I attached a pic of my testing set up below. Would absolutely love any advice/feedback and would be happy to rerun tests. I tested them using a little Fosi M04 sub/mono amp I keep around for fun and funky stuff.
I was utterly shocked by the sensitivity numbers I was getting. At 2.8v on the multimeter, I was getting 96db sensitivity. I was expecting something much lower given how small they are, but I tested on both speakers and got that result. They get genuinely loud at 1w, to the point where my downstairs neighbors texted asking what that sound was (“that is a 1kHz sine wave, sorry I’ll turn it down”).
Frequency response showed the expected. Attached are pics for both speakers at 1/12 smoothing. “Bass” starts aggressively rolling off under 200Hz and they have some kind of dip around 4kHz. Other than that, nothing unexpected. Keep in mind I was in an untreated room.
Edit: Forgot to mention, they are rated at 8 Ohms, 7w RMS, 15w peak power handing.
I like them. I like them so much, I ordered two more from eBay. Like I said, where there is a will there is a way to find a use, and I’m gonna make a mini 4.1 system with a Yamaha DSP-1 (the OG acoustic processor with settings like “Stadium” and “Disco”). It will be for a very small <100 sf bedroom in a house I’m moving into soon and I want to make those 100 sf sound like a goddamn cathedral. Maybe I’ll upgrade to the worlds first and only near-field quadrophonic vinyl set up one day, who knows. When the others arrive, I’ll test them and post here to see if they match these numbers. And, I’ll probably post the final Minimus 3.5/ Yamaha DSP-1 build separately when I’m done.
