Rare Opportunity - Acoustat Model 6
 

Pretty rare to see these for sale! Less than 50 pairs ever made. Hope the buyer finds a good home for these speakers. (no, I'm not the seller)

ACOUSTAT 6 WITH 4 MEDALLION TRANSFORMERS | eBay

Acoustat 6
 

I purchased this pair and they are on their way to Australia. I paid $1700.00usd for the shipping and was told they would arrive here around 4/11/2012.

I never used Acoustat speakers in the past, so I may ask you questions in the future. Hope it is not too much of the hassle.:):):)

Nice score, audioboat. Personally, I think the wide AND tall Acoustats are best, hopefully they float your boat. I suspect you'll want to upgrade the transformer interfaces. This is a great forum for Acoustat info, as is the Planar Asylum.

Andy, do you have info on the number of other Acoustats produced?

Upgrade? Are you talking about the coupling capacitors or something else?

Yes, the caps are a primary upgrade, along with the "C Mod" if it isn't present already. If your trannies have Monster Cable wiring you'll want to replace them, since they corrode, although I think that was probably not still in production when the Model 6 & 8 were released. Other possibilities are replacing the caps & diodes in the voltage multiplier; measuring the preferred setting of the high frequency control rheostat and then replacing it with a fixed resistor; replacing the resistors; new binding posts. Some people bypass the fuses. The electronics are quite old & can benefit from modern components, which can breathe new life & longevity into the speakers. I did many of these mods on my transformer driven 2+2 with excellent results, and plan to do major upgrades to the Acoustat Servo amps I'm now using, as budget permits.

I have no doubt they will sound beautiful as-is, but they can be improved without too much headache or cost. This IS diyAudio, after all. :D

FYI, there are several threads on Acoustats here, with good advice on what to do for the interfaces.

IMO, the *best* thing you can run them with is a high power *triode* tube amp. Something like a pair of 811A in PP... Finding good solid state amplification for Acoustats is more difficult, since many solid state amps do not like to work into the reactive load that the Acoustat looks like. Most of the standard commercial amps imo anyhow sound horrific on Acoustats.

The Acoustat TNT amps are pretty good... but not in the same league as a high power triode tube amp for this load.

As always, YMMV.

Btw, expect serious bass... :D

_-_-bear

PS. you must replace the "crossover" caps for 100% polypropylene. And as mentioned check the B+ for the full 5kv... or else shotgun replace the diode multiplier string, and the ceramic caps (go for 10kv caps)

:D

Sunfire 300....600....work great an sound like tubes....I have had Acoustats for 30years....the sunfire Amps are hard to beat for sand Amps.....Older Mcintosh Amps work good also...tubes are a given..
Long Live Acoustats.....goodluck

Congratulations on your purchase of the Model 6's. The potential for upgrades will depend on the particluar vintage of the speaker, as well as what mods may have been done after original manufacture.

Do keep in mind that each speaker has two interface units, and therefore you'll need a total of four channels of identical amplification. It is NOT recommended to parallel two interfaces on one amplfier channel.

Feel free to ask more questions once you receive your speakers and get them set-up.

Sorry, I don't have any production numbers for each Acoustat model. I don't think such a tally was ever kept. I just know that some of the very large models (6, 8, 66/6600) were produced only as orders were received, and that amounted to only a handful per year. It was always quite the event when an order for one of the large models came in!

I just looked at the eBay auction again, and see that the speakers have the Medallion upgrade. That's good news, since Model 6/8 transformers are very difficult, if not impossible, to find. That also means that any original Monster Cable that might have been in there was removed. That wire did tend to oxidize badly, so it was always replaced when the factory did the Medallion upgrade.