that's a phrase you probably didn't expect to
hear in a review of powered speakers marketing dichotomy
presenting the pickering intimidator 1000 powered speakers
if these look familiar that's because these were also sold by radio shack from 1990 to 1995
as the realistic minimus 0.4 and then later as the optimus amx 4 speakers
as is usual with the stuff i feature on this channel
i found these at the thrift store as well as the handycam i'm using to record this video and i was
curious to see this pickering name because i own several phono cartridges made by pickering
they were one of the first companies back in the 1940s creating high fidelity phono cartridges
and they later merged with the stanton company so a lot of their products were very similar but
they pretty much disappeared by the mid-1980s when cd started taking over pickering phono cartridges
pretty much disappeared and you really didn't see any more products from them until the mid
2000s when they had sort of a mini revival which is when this phone cartridge was produced
but that is their name and logo and it really doesn't look anything
similar to the pickering logo on these speakers
and on the back all it says is intimidator 1000 power speaker system by pickering
doesn't say what pickering company made this it doesn't give any more details besides just made in
china so i don't know if this was even a licensed use of the peckering name it's hard to tell
but regardless of what name they were sold under these have a very classic
1980s early 1990s style to them with this red pinstripe around the edge of the speaker
the chrome dust cap on the center of the cone and this font they use for all the
writing i'm not sure what the name of this font is but i've definitely seen it before
it has switches on the top for direct or powered mode so you can use these also as passive speakers
and they have bass and treble boost switches it's not a variable control just on or off
for the bass and treble boost but you notice one thing that's missing
a volume control so these are completely dependent on the volume of the signal that you're feeding
into them that's the only way you can control the loudness of the sound that comes out of them
there's an input for a six-fold dc 500 milliamp center negative power supply
or each speaker can run on two c batteries so you need to put two batteries in each speaker
and they have this attached 3.5 millimeter 1 8 inch plug on them
for connecting to your walkman or discman or whatever else you want to plug these into
and these have interlocking plastic teeth so with some effort you can separate them and then
by the distance of however much cord is here you can separate them
or if you put them together you can have a shoulder strap which i think these originally
came with to carry them around or even looks like you can connect individual straps for the
left and right speakers i guess if you want to have one on each sholder you could do that too
these have four inch drivers and according to the radio shack ad for the realistic version
of these speakers the amplifier in them is rated at 1.5 watts per channel which certainly doesn't
sound very intimidating and besides why didn't they call the intimidator 1500 if it's rated
at 1.5 watts per channel and it's certainly a marketing dichotomy when one company sells these
as the minimus 0.4 and another company sells them as the intimidator 1000
first i'll try them with this portable cd player which is a little bit odd because it actually kind
of looks like a portable dvd player but when you open up what you would think is the screen there's
actually a pair of built-in speakers but they sound absolutely terrible as i'll show you here
even a crosley cruiser sounds better than that so i'll plug in these pickering speakers this is
the unpowered mode i don't have any batteries in them so just using the amplifier built into this
i think you'll agree that sounds a lot better
i could hear a little bit distortion but that's probably the limitation of the built-in amplifier
and this it was not meant to drive speakers directly it was only meant to drive headphones
now i'm going to put batteries in these speakers and see how much that can improve the sound
now i put in the finest dollar store sunbeam zinc chloride batteries
and when i turn on the power switch you can hear a thump and the little red led
lights up for now i'll leave the bass and treble boost switches off and we'll see how this sounds
about the same as before except louder and with less distortion
this is the bass boost turned off
bass boost turned on again
now the treble boost is off
on
off again
on again
adding the bass boost
so the switches certainly do have an effect but i noticed when you really
push the bass output of these speakers they tend to sound rather flatulent
so it definitely doesn't like the sound of that bass guitar
this camcorder isn't doing it justice but when i push the amplifier beyond the point of distortion
i can see the power led dim and flicker in time with music
so that proves the amplifier on these speakers is really the weak point
but if you don't need them to get that loud these speakers can actually sound pretty good
and just for another reminder how much better these sounds
than the built-in speakers of this player
that's really pathetic
here's a look inside the drivers were made by queen well never heard of that name before
there are 4 ohm speakers rated at 2 watts and there's the amplifier board quite packed with
circuitry unfortunately i couldn't easily get it removed and i didn't want to risk breaking it
but there you can see the speaker outputs it has maxcon brand electrolytic capacitors
the cabinets were made of abs plastic and that could be a date code 887
so perhaps these were made in august 1987 but unfortunately otherwise no real sign
of who actually made these speakers for either pickering or radio shack
i still don't think these speakers are befitting of the pickering name but regardless of what you
call them they certainly have a vintage look that perfectly matches an early 1990s walkman or other
brand of portable cassette player so overall even though they're certainly not intimidating
for what would have been a cheap pair of plastic speakers they're certainly not bad