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Faital 4FE42- New 4" midrange with copper cap
This is the only product in the Faital catalogue with a copper cap for inductance control and lower HD. So I thought I would give it a go. I managed to source this locally, but it took 6 months from Italy to Australia. 
A potential 4” mid-range, with good sensitivity (91+dB/2.83V (8 ohm)), good for ?C4 to C7 (?262Hz to 2.1KHz). It’s a reasonable price for 2024- US$60 from Parts Express:
https://www.parts-express.com/FaitalPRO-4FE42-4-Neodymium-Full-Range-Speaker-8-Ohm-294-1356?quantity=1
It also comes as a 4 ohm driver, but here are graphs the datasheet of the 8 ohm model:
Reference:
https://faitalpro.com/en/products/LF_Loudspeakers/product_details/index.php?id=401005105
Here's an SPL trace with 50dB scale instead of 100dB.
An impedance trace under my Woofer Tester 3 running DATS V2 software:
Cabinet modelling suggests a volume around 0.05 cu ft (1.4L). Anechoic sensitivity is the black trace.
The brown trace is modelling in a narrow cabinet of 5 3/4” W (about half size of US Letter paper) with a 1st order high pass of ~320 Hz; the minimal I would use to protect the driver from running out of excursion.
If the pics comes out very small- The F6 is 254Hz:
Simulated 1.5mm x-max and 38W (8 ohm) power handling allows it to hit 105dB @1m SPL.
It has a stamped basket with a foam gasket designed for rear mounting. FWIW that’s not a stationary phase plug, it’s a pointy paper dust cap. It appears glued to the cone. A fly in the ointment is there doesn’t appear to be any venting under the spider.
More to come as I mount and measure it and do some distortion testing....
Comments
$60usd for a stamped frame that has mounting stipulations. Good efficiency for a 4", but I hope that is not the only trick up it's sleeve. I'd expect quality angel farts.
But I suppose we are not it's target audience.
Price is a little high, but what isn't these days! Neo motor AND copper cap should result in very low HD. Nice high Qms also. My shelves are full, but this is tempting.
Higher sensitivity than Scan 10F and cheaper, but looks like a butt. I guess you can't have it all.
The specs look good. But man that thing got a face for radio.
https://www.jfcomponents.com/
Same price as SB 4" midrange. SB has copper sleeve, cast frame, and way better looking.
SB make fine products but only the SB15 and SB17 range have a “ Extended copper sleeve on pole piece for low inductance and low distortion” Oh and Satori range of course.
The SB12 range (and SB23) all have a “Shorting ring in motor system for reduced distortion” , the SB12PAC has no demodulation device.
The impedance trace and HD plots all reflect this.
I messed around with FE35 which same frame format, was impressed by the sonic character. Very sensitive, but I was trying to use as midrange where not have the acoustic rolloff benefits and the needed to address the mounting (like make a cosmetic cover ring after going cray cray with angle grinder) was clouding my judgement. Further hacked up the mounting to throw into a repurposed plastic speaker box with a hot glued m&k tweeter, which had sonic potential but threw on the back burner with the box resonance issues. Anyway, I was impressed with faital pro fe35, also has a rubber ring where easy to mount from the inside to hide the frame ugliness. But yeah, i ended up loving dropping a sb12 cac in there - incredible mid, though practicing/learning on other attempts to revisit that 3 way (satori9.5-sb12cac-sb29neo). But understand the itch to explore new waters.
Yeah, I reached a point a few years ago that I really cared about THD distribution (2nd / 3rd). Now I'm looking a bit more at IMD. Copper caps on the motors seem to be the thing, or neodymium
I've had similar experiences, fighting with a driver to make it sound good, then dropping in a different drive and it just works well very easily. Good for you!
Impedance trace, Green: free air. Blue, mounted in a 6" spheroidal cabinet of 1.3L volume (0.05 cu ft).
The rest of the measurements are taken in the sealed spheroidal cabinet-
Distortion values are with an electret condenser mic (Sonarworks Xref20) + test amp (Thomann PM40c) in tow; and not the true distortion of the driver, which would be slightly lower. Nevertheless; it may be used to estimate crossover points.
Maybe designed for line arrays ?
That’s a pretty ugly near field if measured at 1 cm.
@Eggguy
X-max by traditional (winding depth - magnetic gap) /2 is only 1.5mm. So the low end is limited. Plus I don't think it's smooth enough on the top end to use as full range in a line array. For a line array, I'd take the TC9 or TG9 over it.
@jhollander
Yes there's definitely a destructive resonance causing a dip at 3KHz that you can see in the near field (and impedance sweep) I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with driver modifications to diagnose/ameliorate this. ?dust cap mod ?other mod
On the other hand, it becomes less severe in the far field, but yeah, it's still there. However, based on the directivity measurements, I believe the upper frequency limit is just about 3KHz anyhow. Here it is, measured in a spheroidal cabinet, 6" in diameter.
With a crossover for acoustic LR4 300Hz and 3KHz: hor 0-90 only for clarity:
Polar map of same:
Some may like a 4" driver with optimized geometry to be able to cross a bit higher. I get that.
https://techtalk.parts-express.com/forum/tech-talk-forum/66754-how-to-train-your-pm180-8
Narrow dispersion.. mate up to a bullet tweet or cd?
Thanks for the link!
I've got some PM180s on the shelf - looks like I will be doing some modifications to them.