spica tc-60

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Howdy! This is my first post on this fourm so please forgive me for any breaches of fourm ettiquite I may inadvertantly commit. my question is, are there any Spica tc-60 fans out there in cyberland?I've had these lovely speakers for many years and they continue to amaze me with their knack for drawing me into the music. If anyone has ever hot rodded these speakers I'd love to hear from you!
 
tc-60

Thanks inertal, I don't know about that phase thingie you mention but I can tell you they are very sweet if a bit polite in the treble, a pain in the fundament to set up and they image like the Dickens! I'm thinking of adding a ribbon tweeter to take care of the rolloff abouve 10kh
 
tc-60

hello again Inertia, In the eight or so years I've had the Spicas, I've tried every positioning option you could shake a stick at. Right now they are about 3 feet from the far end of my smallish studio apartment. I live in NY you know! They are mounted on 24in. Parts express heavy duty stands aprox. 8 feet apart and about 12 feet from my couch,angled towards my ears and tilted 3 degrees down giving the tweeters a clear shot. My electronics are nothing earth shaking, Adcom gfa5500 amp,Parasound pre, an arthritic old Denon t-table with a grado cart and a modded Teac cd player.The imaging I'm getting is spooky good! It's wide ,deep,and coherant. You should hear what it does with Johnny Cash Unearthed!Yet,Yet!!!..............The ireducable fact is that the smooth,velvety,lusiously sweet Vifa tweeter rolls off at about 6db per octave above 10kh and no amount of cableing or electronic switching can change it. To compensate for this I use......(que omonous music!) Gasp!, tone controls. There I said it!My name is Bob and I'm a toneaholic! A ribbon super tweet would allow me to switch that crap off and have a cleaner signal going to my speakers.............Thanks again!
 

BHD

diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
One of the best systems I've ever heard was a pair of TC-60's powered by a Quicksilver GLA. They were in a relatively small room, didn't have the bottom octave or much in the highs, but they completely disappeared when the music was playing. Wall to wall sound, pinpoint imaging and soooo musical. Many times I've thought about getting this combination on the used market and forgetting about audio gear forever.

I've also thought about getting a couple of Marchand electronic crossover boards and actively bi-amping using a pair of GLA's, removing the passive crossover altogether.

Someday, maybe I will. :)
 
Hi Bob,
IMHO I think 12 feet is too much far.
Again, if I well remember, owners manual are precise about
the height of your ear respect TC-60 : approx. in line with the upper border of the woofer ( excuse me, not sure 100%).
If not ,you loose step response- caratheristcs .
Perdone my poor english, if you have time, try a near field setup and,
probabily you will not need of treble control........ ;)

Cheers,
Inertial

P.S.: I like Johnny Cash!
P.P.S.: TC = time choerent
 
"I've also thought about getting a couple of Marchand electronic crossover boards and actively bi-amping using a pair of GLA's, removing the passive crossover altogether."

IMO you'd risk losing the Spica magic (I had TC50's and loved them), which was in large part from John Bau's unusual XO designs.
 
tc-60

Greetings all, You guys are right. John Bau's speakers with their wide baffles,kinky crossovers and thick felt blankets went against the grain at a time when the trend was narrow baffles,minimalist crossovers and wide dispersion. And they sounded great! The audio industry needs cool,oddball designers like him who have a diferent way of seeing things. Think about the weird and wonderful MBL speakers and you know what I mean. It's a shame John Bau got fed up with all the audio industry nonsense and droped out. I checked out the Quicksilver website and their amps look tasty! KT-88s, El-34s,I'm in!!!
 
Thanks again Inertial, I tried the nearfield setup you mentioned years ago and it did indeed sound just dandy(still rolled off above 10kh tho). The only problem with this setup was the fact that it placed my speakers smack dab in the middle of my room, turning every trip to the bathroom or sink into a high precision slalom course! One time I even ran into the left speaker like it was a tackleing dummy and sent it crashing to the floor! As you can see,this configuration is not viable as a permanent setup. Believe me when I tell you that I've tried every option but duct taping them to my head and useing them as headphones(Bad for the finish and a mite heavy)!
 
tc-60guy said:
You've read my mind! I'd like to clone the x-over using premium parts, mount it outside the cabinet and beef up the cabinet to make it more non resonant,



excerpt from September 2002 interview with John Bau in Enjoy the Music:



OM: Any recommendations for upgrades or modifications for any one of your designs?

JB: For TC-50 and Angelus; replacement of the electrolytic caps with film types will help (they start going south after a decade or so anyway). Exact design values should be used (not the values printed on the parts; we batched all our components to better than 0.1% groups, and paralleled them to achieve exact values). I'd have to dig up the schematics to find the target values. Conversion to bi-wiring would help as well. That requires some ground trace mods to the xover, though. Maybe some additional bracing between back and baffle would help too.
I don't recommend replacing the inductors, as aircore types would have to be humongous to achieve the same high Q of ours, and the resistor values in the circuit are all dependent on the residual resistance of the coils. Besides, all the coils and resistors are non-ferrous and quite linear within the speakers' power ratings.


(emphasis mine)


The box is small enough that a couple of 3/4" x 2" ply braces between the front baffle and rear panel would stiffen it up significantly. Of course, the truly adventuresome would just build a new pair of boxes with extra bracing, including from magnet to rear panel.


Any further modifications to the crossover other than upgrading quality of caps, or changing or adding drivers would result in a completely different speaker system - one that might have more notable performance in some areas, but possibly not the holograhpic coherence for which these little babies were renowned.

Ever have the opportunity to try different electronics ( i.e tubed gear?)



Read the entire interview, John's ennui is our loss


http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/equipment/0900/spicafever.htm
 

BHD

diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
The stereophile review of the TC-60 includes information about the crossover slopes and frequencies, so it should be easy to use a Marchand outboard crossover and actively bi-amp. If it doesn't work, I can always put the crossovers back in.

TC-60 guy - Quicksilver amps are great, but since they're not well known, they go for a song used. I've heard several of their amps, but I still feel the best sounding was the little GLA. They come up on Audiogon from time to time, but keep your eyes open as they get snapped up pretty quick. One thing I really like about them is that you can use many different types of output tubes, so tube rolling can change the sound of the amps.
 
Thanks a lot guys, The idea of bi-amping the spicas with an active crossover really appeals to me! Alas, droping another 4-5000 bucks into my system is not an option fo a audio bottom feeder like me and might be overkill for an eight year old pair of speakers I only spent five hundred dollars for in the first place. I am however willing to spend five or six hundred dollars to build an upgraded external passive crossover for my babies! Externalizing the crossovers would allow me to better shield them, isolate them from the drivers magnetic fields and allow me to brace the inside of the cabinets without giving up too much internal volume.
 
"The idea of bi-amping the spicas with an active crossover really appeals to me! "

It seems you're missing the point that it would be a different speaker system, not an improved version of the same one.

Active XO's (at least stock ones) are standard XO types/orders, and Spica's are not.
 
spica tc

Hi Noah, I have no plans to biamp my speakers due to cost and space considerations. However, putting on my devils advocate hat for a minute, it would seem to me that any passive x-over could be modeled accurately with an active crossover especially if it's done within the digital domain. I'm applying sort of a defacto hippocratic oath to this project (First, do no harm).
 
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