Any currently produced drivers for LS3/5A?

[fructose]

Hello, brand new here so please bare with me.

I have searched for this information on the The Unofficial LS3/5a Support Site.

Are there any new drivers being produced that have close specs to the currently out of production KEF B110 and T27?


If I was to buy a kit would I be able to use drop in replacements? Hard to believe some other manufacturer has not cloned these.

[woof]

Jeff Bagby of PCD fame, designed the Continuum. The kit is available from Meniscus.
Continuum, Pr

[system7]

The BBC LS3/5A was carefully equalised in the crossover for what is, by modern standards, a quirky heavy 5" KEF bextrene unit and a mylar domed T27 tweeter. I'd say the art has moved on a lot.

Tweeters like the Vifa XT19TD00-04 soft dome are just SO much better. You have a huge choice of 5" units these days too. Kevlar or paper might be nice. Naturally cabinet size is dictated by woofer characteristics, but if you then apply baffle step correction and tweeter impedance equalisation, you should get something very BBC, as discussed here:
Classic monitor designs?

Baffle step calculation: Loudspeaker Diffraction Loss and Baffle Step Compensation Circuits
Impedance correction: Impedance Equalization (L-Pad) Circuit Designer / Calculator

One must move with the times!

[el`Ol]

I have owned the Spendor BC1 and have heard really many current production speakers. You can build lookalikes of such speakers, but nothing that is similar to bextren cones sonically. The best current production polymer cones IMHO are those from ATE, but as far as I know they are not available for DIYers.
http://www.a-t-e.de/
Polypropylene IMHO is no option.

[gfiandy]

I believe these drivers were intended to be a modern take on the KEF drivers. However I really doubt they will work as drop in replacements. It is very likely the crossover will need to be matched to the characteristics of the driver.

SPP-110/8 - Monacor hiFi bass-midrange speakers 60Wmax 8Ω - Europe


http://www.europe-audio.com/Product.asp?Product_ID=3665

I have not tried these so can't comment on if they are any good but they are not that expensive if you wanted to have a go.

Regards,
Andy

[fructose]

Originally Posted by woof

Jeff Bagby of PCD fame, designed the Continuum. The kit is available from Meniscus.
Continuum, Pr

Very nice. Exactly what I'm looking for. Do you know of any other pictures of that one. I could not find any specific threads.

Tweeters like the Vifa XT19TD00-04 soft dome are just SO much better. You have a huge choice of 5" units these days too.

Thanks. Any specific kits, or designs with part lists you can recommend?

[sreten]

Originally Posted by fructose

Hello, brand new here so please bare with me.

I have searched for this information on the The Unofficial LS3/5a Support Site.

Are there any new drivers being produced that have close specs to the currently out of production KEF B110 and T27?


If I was to buy a kit would I be able to use drop in replacements? Hard to believe some other manufacturer has not cloned these.

Hi,

Why would you want to clone drivers, especially the B110
that have known issues and known consistency issues ?
Why would you build drivers you know you have to correct
in the x/o ? (This applies to most bextrene cone drivers.)
and why build drivers with low power handling ?

You can get 3/4" tweeters that easily outperform the T27.

Although it has a cult following, the LS3/5A is not a particularly
good domestic loudpeaker*, it ended being relatively poor value,
and still is if you pay the going rate for vintage drivers (a lot
of which are not the correct spec) and build cabs and x/o.

a fully working, ful spec pair of L3/5A's would be a nice thing
to own, a bit of history, but they are not cheap. It is not worth
the effort IMO to try and clone them, given other options.

I've not seen that Continuum kit before, TBH it looks quite good.
The fat bass is replicated, the rest of it looks good to me.

rgds, sreten.

* for its cost.

[fructose]

My interest in the LS5/3A comes from in store audition (Rogers) about 22 years that left a great impression. I recently read some articles about them (and their cult following) that spurned my re-interest. That is how I ended up at this discussion board.

Why would you want to clone drivers, especially the B110
that have known issues and known consistency issues ?
Why would you build drivers you know you have to correct
in the x/o ? (This applies to most bextrene cone drivers.)
and why build drivers with low power handling ?

You can get 3/4" tweeters that easily outperform the T27.

I was not aware of any this. Any suggestions for a 2-way bookshelf for roughly under $1000 USD in parts?

I found this info on the Asterion, but a quick search tells me that Vifa XT18WH 6.5"might not be available anymore.

http://www.rjbaudio.com/Asterion/asterion.html


I do have the woodworking skills and tools to build great cabinets, so I just need a great set of plans and part list for a set of currently available drivers. I have built one set of speakers from scratch many years ago from my own calculated design with mediocre results.

Thanks for the help!

[gfiandy]

Please ignore earlier post which points to the wrong Monacor drive unit. This kit from Stirling has modern replacement drive units and a crossover to match. It even comes with the baffle so all you need to make it the rest of the box to match.

Complete Replacement LS3 5a Driver Kit Pair items in Stirling Broadcast LS3 5a Shop store on eBay!

I have no experience of these parts so can't comment on how well the work.

Regards,
Andrew

[AndrewT]

the LS3/5 were a monitoring speaker. Probably only for nearfield use.
As such they were intended for helping to find errors in transmission quality.
That made them fairly good as not loud level reproduction speakers in a quiet domestic environment.
They certainly were not made for a Christmas party, nor the kids' friends coming round.