Morel CAT328-104 Classic Advanced Tweeter 1" Textile Dome 8 ohm

I recently purchased a pair of these Morel CAT 328-104 soft dome tweeters to replace an aging pair of Audax Titanium 1" dome tweeters in my DIY MTM speakers. I needed an 8 ohm tweeter with good power handling in a soft dome because I wanted something that would provide a darker and less fatiguing high end than I had been used to. My design parameter was to create the flattest frequency response possible for my speakers, and my personal preference is a slightly darker top end. I find many speakers and tweeters out there to be fatiguing in the high end, even when run with dedicated full range amplification.

The CAT 328-104 met and exceeded my expectations on the sound they produce. In my setup I'm running a 3rd order 18db/oct crossover with dual 8ohm Audax 6.5" HM170C0 drivers and one of these Morel Tweeters per speaker. Madisound produced the crossovers for me in 2004 or 2005 and I don't have the specs anymore on what the crossover frequency is, but I estimate it to probably be at 2000Hz.

The CAT 328-104 tweeters are some of the best soft-dome tweeters I've ever heard. Highs sound so real with jazz, orchestral, and vocals (especially female vocals) without sounding tinny or over-accentuated. Because these are soft-dome tweeters, they don't ring the way my old Titanium dome tweeters do and are not fatiguing to my ears at all, at moderate listening levels. What's most impressive about these is the power handling. Morel's rating for these, if genuinely accurate are quite astounding for tweeters and mean that you can drive your entire system and have that much more power headroom before experiencing any distortion or break-up (NONE of which I have experienced with these units). From an inspection of the driver construction, it is believeable that these are capable of a high RMS wattage rating: the domes are large extremely convex, inherently strengthening them, you can see the voice coil opening submerged in a translucent material with a very wide surround, the widest tweeter surround I've ever seen. Morel seems to over-engineer their drivers, choosing larger voice coils (look at their woofer line for example sporting 3" voice coils) and slightly oversizing their tweeters. This 28mm dome tweeter is just a hair larger than a regular 1" dome, and combined with a rear chamber, which lowers its free air resonant frequency, creates a high end driver for what I consider a real value.

With that said, I have two complains:

First are with the connection lead tabs: like most other manufacturers, Morel has used a single rivet to affix each tab to the basket, which is relatively weak, so if you have a female spade connection that is fairly tight, exercise caution when sliding it on, or you may damage or even break the connection lead. I would like to see the leads be longer and use two rivets in addition to some sort of super adhesive, to eliminate any possibility of damage on installation.

Second, and this is purely aesthetic: I don't find the drivers attractive in person and when mounted to the speaker baffle. Don't let Morel's profile picture of the CAT328 fool you, these drivers look strange. Here's why: because of the translucent dome, convex shape, and visible voice coil opening at the bottom, under direct illumination (overhead track lighting for example), they look like eyeballs that stare at you. My DIY speakers sit on a stage that is well lit and both my significant other and myself get creeped out by these tweeters looking at us. It's become somewhat of a running joke between us about the tweeters always watching us. Sometimes we wonder if the domes will start moving around and track us as we move about our listening room or if they will someday blink. If they do ever blink, I'll return them, otherwise, I'm very pleased with my purchase!

I'm rating the CAT 328-104 a 4 out of 5 stars for the following reasons:

PROS:
-Subjectively great value for high quality sound
-Rear chamber and low Fs
-Very airy highs that are non-fatiguing
-Reinforced 28mm dome with very wide surround
-High power handling moves distortion far out of normal listening levels

CONS:
-No underhung voice coil
-Morel only charts the frequency response up to 20kHz, I would personally like to see these charted all the way up to 100kHz to see what they look like as they break up
-Connection tabs are poorly secured to the basket. Instead of a single rivet, there needs to be a much more secure mounting mechanism
-Very poor aesthetics. Nobody can deny that the domes look like eyeballs: they do and are very creepy.