10-year Old Speakers Revived (Celestion A1)

[bonbonchef]

I am glad that this project has finally completed and the speakers sound very good.

http://www.pbase.com/deepocket/speak...ilding_project

Since I didn't design my own cross-over, most of the challenges I encountered are mechanical, and it has been great fun conquering them one by one, beginning with the slipping lock nuts from the original speakers, and ended with the foam twisted out of place due to long bolts hitting the foam.

The last problem upset me quite a bit initially after I first put the drivers back into the box. All the treble decays were gone and bass sounded strange (flat and not bouncy), which i didnt encounter during smoke test.

Now everything sounds very good from top to bottom and better than the original speakers (it'd better be) - stable soundstage, fast transient with crisp leading edge. Clean, coherent, fast bass. Plucking of double-bass sounds so real and extension is good - it used to be like bass+pucking transient, I can feel the whole string vibrates - kind'a hard to describe. My subwoofer now contributes very little, only when bass drum is playing.

My set-up:
Rotel 971 with XO-clock and opamp mods
Passive pre
VTL ST-85 with the usual tubes, nothing fancy
kimber interconnects
AQ midnight

As you can see my setup is pretty old.

Anyway, the other reason I post here is too see if there are any Celestion A-series owners out there. I might want to get one more pair.