Lately I've been depressed (no, don't worry, this isn't a sob story) and I try to distract myself somehow. I also noticed there gathered lots of drivers and horns and damping material and other speaker stuff, a lot of chinese amp boards, PSs and I realized that's a lot more than I really need or I'll use for my 'serious' projects. A lot of cheap stuff but also good ones I've often got by bidding on eBay, thinking "eh, just enter the minimum bid, it will sell for much more anyway" without really planning to do something with it or getting it with a project in mind. But now I thought I should really get rid of something or actually do a project with it.
I don't want to do the 5738th 2-way with a 17cm/25mm, I find that rather boring. I like big speakers. I like vintage HiFi but not everything has to come from the 70s or 80s. So, my question is, would you invest time, wood etc to build a speaker that's a reminiscence to vintage speakers?But would it be a good idea to use the cheap-ish drivers and horns etc you know aren't optimal? Would you build (to name a few well known speakers) a Klipsch Cornwall clone, LaScala, Heresy or vintage JBL (etc) if it re-creates the look very close, even if i.e. the horns don't have a modern dispersion pattern? With 'original' front cloth? Without? Or would you use something less close to the classic speaker? Modern color/finish or vintage all the way? Would you like it to sound as neutral as possible or prefer the sound of the original? Modify the principle? Like a LaScala with BR for LF extension? What classic/vintage speaker do you think would be nice to build?
Just to show one example, here some pictures of the Klipsch Hersey but I'm not fixated on the Hersey or Klipsch in general.
I don't want to do the 5738th 2-way with a 17cm/25mm, I find that rather boring. I like big speakers. I like vintage HiFi but not everything has to come from the 70s or 80s. So, my question is, would you invest time, wood etc to build a speaker that's a reminiscence to vintage speakers?But would it be a good idea to use the cheap-ish drivers and horns etc you know aren't optimal? Would you build (to name a few well known speakers) a Klipsch Cornwall clone, LaScala, Heresy or vintage JBL (etc) if it re-creates the look very close, even if i.e. the horns don't have a modern dispersion pattern? With 'original' front cloth? Without? Or would you use something less close to the classic speaker? Modern color/finish or vintage all the way? Would you like it to sound as neutral as possible or prefer the sound of the original? Modify the principle? Like a LaScala with BR for LF extension? What classic/vintage speaker do you think would be nice to build?
Just to show one example, here some pictures of the Klipsch Hersey but I'm not fixated on the Hersey or Klipsch in general.
Something like this, perhaps:
https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/floorstanding-speakers/pit-vipers
Geoff
https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/floorstanding-speakers/pit-vipers
Geoff
I like the idea very much but my experience from the past showed such gifts are received as precious (for them) as they were expensive (for them). From "my GF didn't like the color" (and getting dumped to the curb, someone picked them up and sold them for 600 bucks on ebay later) to "yeah, they were good but now I have JBLs!" (well, Control 1.. yeah, the labels were obviously more important than how it sounds) ranging 'thankful' encounters resulted in my insight that no good deed will remain unpunished. Ever.
Thanks for the suggestion. These speakers will surely be fun and I think I have enough laying around to build something similar. Not very vintage but I like the idea. Thank you!
Yes, I feel the same, there's no need to repeat (more or less) obvious faults.
That would be something I would 'automatically' fix and not even thought about mentioning and I wouldn't want to keep that close to the original to repeat such a bad error, so I couldn't agree any more! Mounting the horns from the front wouldn't be a drastical design change in my opinion but that alone would greatly improve the sound. I've posted the Hersey as example but I'm not a great fan of the EV T-35 tweeter, it's not a great task to find a CD which performs a lot better, even among the cheap stuff I will probably use.
I know there are often a lot better drivers than the ones I'll probably post later on and some of them will surely be outperformed by newer drivers. I just don't want to buy something for these speakers. In general, my Idea was to reduce the number of drivers I've laying around and to build these speakers without spending much or even anythinig.
Yeah why not! I always wanted a pair of JBL Large format monitors so I cloned a pair of 4344's. Glad I did and still have them. They are a snap shot in time and have their own strengths and weaknesses. They may not be as "good" as modern systems but frankly that's not the point. They can be quite a bit of fun!
Rob 🙂
Rob 🙂
If I would build "old" type speakers, I would make an old English type, like the IMF big transmission lines, when they came on sale, I didn't have that sort of money to buy them, so I bought the IMF Super Compact 2, later I made a bigger TL cabinet and put in a Coles supertweeter....loved it...
Cheers, Tom.
Cheers, Tom.
I just checked roughly (lost the nerve to dig deeper after that), I've got 6 pairs of 12" drivers, 4 of them being (high spl) full range drivers and one pair of mid horn drivers (fs 90Hz, Qts of 0,19 or lower, don't remember exactly) and a hand full of divorced 15" single drivers missing a counterpart (not subwoofer material). 5 pairs of 15" of varying quality. A number of lonely 15" and 18" drivers suitable for subwoofers (don't feel like building yet another sat/sub combination though) and 4 or 5 pairs of party/PA 10" drivers. Roughly 10-12 pairs of CDs. Not to mention dozens of 8" and smaller cones, domes, foils and frs.
What sparked my idea to build a vintage style speaker (besides having too much laying around, being bored and running out of space) was these horns:
Please don't mind the clutter on the desk - but don't they look extremely vintage? I mean, like out of a 70s Klipsch Heresey? I don't like the P.Audio tweeters of the recent Klipsch Heresey even if they are a lot, SOOO MUCH better than the EV.
Yes, these horns don't have a great dispersion, dropping off off-center horizontally, vertical is worse. I've got Pyle, Celestion, Monacor, Kenford, Oberon and no-name CDs I could use for the tweeter horns. I've got Selenium, Kenford and no-name CDs I could use for the mid horns or Kenford or Celestion CDs from the mids and highs. Or use completely different horns to cover mids to highs from 15" to the top end.
Ich bin in einem krea-tief.
What sparked my idea to build a vintage style speaker (besides having too much laying around, being bored and running out of space) was these horns:
Please don't mind the clutter on the desk - but don't they look extremely vintage? I mean, like out of a 70s Klipsch Heresey? I don't like the P.Audio tweeters of the recent Klipsch Heresey even if they are a lot, SOOO MUCH better than the EV.
Yes, these horns don't have a great dispersion, dropping off off-center horizontally, vertical is worse. I've got Pyle, Celestion, Monacor, Kenford, Oberon and no-name CDs I could use for the tweeter horns. I've got Selenium, Kenford and no-name CDs I could use for the mid horns or Kenford or Celestion CDs from the mids and highs. Or use completely different horns to cover mids to highs from 15" to the top end.
Ich bin in einem krea-tief.
Looks like “Vintage Klipsch Heresy”. I had Mk 1s, they sucked big time.
I thnk they are at V4 now.
Vintage for me personally were 8” FRs. Then i got into EPI, and then DIY,
Haven’t yet heard a good system that is a direct-radiator/horn combo. They must exist, there are so many of them, and many owned by people i respect.
dave
I thnk they are at V4 now.
Vintage for me personally were 8” FRs. Then i got into EPI, and then DIY,
Haven’t yet heard a good system that is a direct-radiator/horn combo. They must exist, there are so many of them, and many owned by people i respect.
dave
Uhm, thanks but I can't place this anywhere and while it's an important milestone, I don't like the acoustcal properties or the room requirements. And I have never ever met someone who'd like that, knowing how it sounds and what the room requirements are and how limited it is acoustcally. It gives the perfect 50s vibes but other than the optical highlight I'd rather prefer it to be about 20 years younger when they started to care about the actual sound properties of speakers.
E: I don't have anything laying around that would make such a build possible and I don't want to buy anything for it either. Thanks for the suggestion anyway since it's an interesting speaker after all.
I think my Peavey Sp2(2004) sound more like a Steinway piano than anything else I have heard. SP2-XT before them were also great, but were stolen.15" woofer and 1" CD on horn crossed at 1800 hz. I have a 1940 Steinway console piano for direct comparison. Not lows like a grand, but the high notes are as good. I went to audition SP2-XT in a craigslist ad that looked like a 1966 VOT that my band director suggested we players go listen to. I had perfect hearing in 1966. Now I roll off at 14000 hz.
Not a lot of demonstrator speakers in this flyover city. RAC sells 5' tall 5 ways that buzz and boom down on the sidewalk of the shopping center. Best Buy sells a Polk full range (I assume) that they will not demonstrate. Churches are full of Bose lines of 5" speakers mounted on the ceiling that are absolutely terrible on anything but voice. Systems sold to deaf old man that run church music committees. Brown auditorium has some Meyersounds that I thought had screechy violins. Could have been a poorly recorded CD.
I have to say my music room is excellent. 14'w 11' tall 33' long, shaped like wein philhamonica hall. Speakers are on poles at one end backed up against a hard plaster wall. Turned to face couch on one wall. Tweeters are 8' high pointing down at the couch 11' away. Lots of record racks bookshelves cd racks foam couch/loveseat/chair set, 2 pianos, 2 organs, 2 organ speakers. In back half DR table 6 chairs, mail table. carpet & acoustic tile ceiling. All that clutter breaks up the standing waves.
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It seems a lot of the Klipsch crowd respect the integrity of the originals but I have wondered about trying to voice them to be more neutral.
Yes, they weren't great. They could go loud but they were as flat as the rockys and low distortion wasn't on the scale either. It was very impressive though, compared to what was available at that time. Even JBL was barely better (at ~twice the price) and EV sucked even more with many of their speakers, it was like throwing dices for what you could get.
There are definitely a lot of speakers which are better but there are not that many a lot of ppl know other vintage speakers, Klipsch definitely made themselves known at that time. But, als already mentioned, it's just an example, I'm not fixated on that.
The first time I was impressed by a Klipsch speaker was in a disco which had the Klipsch corner horns, they had the mid- and high horns too. I wasn't exactly extatic about that but the dynamics and pressure the corner horns delivered were outstanding! That was early 80s and that was what made me build my first BL horns. There are amazing PA speakers with horn/direct radiating drivers, though most are are just okay-ish to fairly-good. I'm tempted to build BL horns with my 12" Ciare drivers (25kg each! if I remember correctly) but I don't want to sacrifice that much space to place them perfectly, the dispersion is quite narrow. not easy to handle if you have a lot of other speakers you still love to listen to.
A horn/direct radiating speaker that's really remarkable is the JBL 4430, 4435 (or, in limits, the JBL 4728AP or similar). You should really try to listen to them if you get the chance.
As to people I respect.. well, that's a kinda mixed bag you're getting. There are ppl I really respect and I honor their achievements but I often do not agree to their judgement. I don't doubt experience but what they claim is often ..'tinted'.. by their status and nobody even DARES to raise a doubt on that. That's wrong, even the most renowned and technical adept person got personal preferences and pride in their work. That more often than not, clashes with measurements, other function principles, plain physics or just different weighting of criteria (among other things). Just because someone got a big name doesn't mean everything they are doing is perfect. It's rather the opposite, there are only very few things that can't be improved anymore (ie. you can't improve on Mms on certain tweeters in any possible way). That doesn't make it worse what you've done so far, in most cases your groundwork is a basis for improvements that were not possible before. But I've clashed with so many folks because they were so adamantly sure they did everything perfect and didn't want to believe someone just threw a view on it and immediately found something not ideal. Again, that makes it not any worse but it's very easy to forget there are still improvements possible. I mean, we had our clashes too but to take that as an example, I think you understood it wasn't a personal thing, for me it was only about that there are still things that could be improved or that a claim wasn't (fully?) correct. For me, it's not I have to prove I'm right but to show there are still possibilities or alternatives that can provide a better result.
Sorry for rambling on, what I wanted to say is, if you think there's a way to improve something, don't let you deter from that just because there's a page or a paper that says so. There are still a lot of arguments that might show that's wrong but just because someone worked for a big company or did groundbreaking research doesn't mean everything of that or that person is perfect (ie. my dispute with S.L.), and be it that some technical development wasn't available at the time of their research.
If you think you are right, then it's worth discussing it. And if you are wrong and that's proven, be happy because you've learned something from it.
Listening experience is something different though. Even if the person can't explain why it sounds that way, that experience is probably or even likely still valid. And yes, if you know how someone judges the same speaker you've listened too, you often know how to apply that judgement of the person to a different speaker - and that's a very important issue while developing speakers, discussing how certain tracks sound, what the weaknesses and strength of a speaker (or signal chain) are. But if you don't know the person and how they are listening etc, their judgement is not that much/fully valid to you. Room, taste, music material, volume etc all play an essential role in such a judgement and you often can't compare the 'dimensions' of the description unless you know how that person listens to music and what room etc is in that experience. That doesn't mean their deep felt impression is wrong but you have to sieve through it to get it to relevant dimensions you can compare it to.
Yes, that was also something I've encountered. The 'general accepted judgement' seemed often like it's untouchable and I cannot accept it just because it got a big name on it. The EV T-35 were bad, very bad back then and now they are sold for hundreds! Really, you can get a 30 bucks CD with horn that's MAGNITUDES better than the old EV tweeter. The Electro Voice Patrician was impressive but very bad at fr, distortion and IR. I suspect they just sold these because of their name and reputation.