Decca Kelly ribbon tweeter with Philips fullrange

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Hi,
Does anyone have experience with the Decca Kelly horn ribbon tweeters?
I have a pair of the Kelly Romagna mk2 and the Decca London, which I'd like to use with a 12" fullrange driver.

My plan is to use one of those ribbon tweeters with a Philips/Norelco fullrange driver (9762/05).
The fullrange driver is 8 ohm, frequency response of 30 to 12,000 Hz, and sensitivity is 99 db/W/m (see attached graph)

I am thinking to cross the tweeter at 8,000 Hz.
Any advice or tips on this?
Thanks in advance
 

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Um, I think I have one of those Norelco's sitting around from 1960.

Those tweeters were glorious in days long ago. No real problem just adding them without filtering out highs from the Norelco. And here posters always toss off a "... why not... just try it...."

Surely they'll play lower than with 8kHz xover, assuming more than just a capacitor in series since the tweeters will need protection, I assume? Not much music in those high frequencies while the ribbons will be great if playing within the useful audio band.

Can't say as I'm much of a vintage audio gear fan even if I am myself a vintage listener.

B.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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The Decca London is one of my favorite tweeters of all time. Use it as low as you can. We had some prototype Decca speaker boxes that crossed the London to an 8” bass driver at about 1kHz. Once we finished tarting it up it provided some very memorable listening sessions.

dave
 

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frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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The Decca London goes lower than the Kelly which is best XOed at 2.5-3k. The Decca prototype we got to play with had a paper cone 8, i don’t know whose. The XO i posted is just a proven HP for the London, one would need to choose the right XO to mate with the midWoofers. Given the flattish impedance of the ribbons one could likely scale the HP shown for the Kelly.

The tweeter is of a quality that deserves a high quality midbass.

When we were selling the London, it usually went with KEF B200 or the better, similar size Audax. There are many better woofers available today.

With the Kelly you might consider the Mark Audio Alpair 12pw. In the Woden ML-TL response into the mid 20s, and extention to 10k or so giving a couple octaves of overlap.

As a 6.5” driver with highish dispersion it should mate well at the XO. You could even use a pair in an MTM.

I expect 10w Calss A should work well as long as the XO doesn’t get in the way, and it has good clipping behaviour.

dave
 
Although it seems pretty obvious for all speakers, this may be an esp correct place for an electronic crossover. In addition to all the compelling reasons for thinking passive crossovers are today silly for other systems, it is possible the impedance and other characteristics of the Decca ribbon unit will be unsuitable for a passive crossover.

Likewise, a DSP may be a good choice if time alignment is tricky too.

Anybody know?

B.
 
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