I just acquired a pair of DW ES speakers w/o any ID on them as to model. I am a total rookie when it comes to the ES world. They have 10 panels and 2 tweeters. The bias supply is an ST-300A. I’m reasonably sure there is no gas left in the bag. The person I got these from tried to power them up. One side crackled and the other was dead. The story I got was they were in a damp basement for decades. I took the grills off due to mold and wiped down cabinets. It looks like one speaker has a corroded connector in need of replacement. Any info on these dudes would be helpful. Did some on-line info gathering but haven’t found any links to manual or model #
Dan
Dan
Dayton-Wright XG-10 ESL.
I sold 3 pr of the XG-8. Fantastic Loudspeaker. A bitch to drive.
On first blush it sounds like a PSU issue. They definitely need the gas. Suppher HexaFlouride.
Even broken they are worth money. It is Tenor Audio i believe is hoovering up as many as they can for the ELS panels. https://pmamagazine.org/the-dayton-wright-hommage-a-state-of-the-art-redesign-of-a-classic-speaker/
dave
@Nelson Pass
I sold 3 pr of the XG-8. Fantastic Loudspeaker. A bitch to drive.
On first blush it sounds like a PSU issue. They definitely need the gas. Suppher HexaFlouride.
Even broken they are worth money. It is Tenor Audio i believe is hoovering up as many as they can for the ELS panels. https://pmamagazine.org/the-dayton-wright-hommage-a-state-of-the-art-redesign-of-a-classic-speaker/
dave
@Nelson Pass
Thanks, Dave.
About 10 yrs ago, sold my XG10 (with Klipschorn bass... very good match to DW) to a group from the Montreal club, I have returned to my open-air system with XG8 panels (6 per side) that sound better than the XG10s. Built these around 1977. Bias from an EMCO module.
Recently, wanted to downsize and sell these panels and the two extra DW transformers (37 lbs each). But I couldn't do it.... the sound is simply too amazing (but the two extra transformers are still for sale and other DW bits).
The gas enables the XG10 to put out nice bass down to about 50 Hz but inhibits the treble. The panels were on the surface of a sphere which, Mike said, was like creating a virtual point source.
The XG10 piezo tweeters actually test quite well for FR and distortion, but look cheap. I help my top end (north of 4kHz) with fancy film tweeters which are better.
Attached is the full-range FR for the panels, no EQ, no tweeter, rather small room. Distortion is so low hard to measure without having the silence of an anechoic chamber. The aluminum box in the lower left corner holds the transformers etc.
Ben
About 10 yrs ago, sold my XG10 (with Klipschorn bass... very good match to DW) to a group from the Montreal club, I have returned to my open-air system with XG8 panels (6 per side) that sound better than the XG10s. Built these around 1977. Bias from an EMCO module.
Recently, wanted to downsize and sell these panels and the two extra DW transformers (37 lbs each). But I couldn't do it.... the sound is simply too amazing (but the two extra transformers are still for sale and other DW bits).
The gas enables the XG10 to put out nice bass down to about 50 Hz but inhibits the treble. The panels were on the surface of a sphere which, Mike said, was like creating a virtual point source.
The XG10 piezo tweeters actually test quite well for FR and distortion, but look cheap. I help my top end (north of 4kHz) with fancy film tweeters which are better.
Attached is the full-range FR for the panels, no EQ, no tweeter, rather small room. Distortion is so low hard to measure without having the silence of an anechoic chamber. The aluminum box in the lower left corner holds the transformers etc.
Ben
Attachments
Coincidentally;
There's a current thread running on the ML Owner's Forum about rebuilding a pair of Dayton Write ESLs:
https://www.martinloganowners.com/t...-high-output-electrostatic-loadspeaker.20052/
There's a current thread running on the ML Owner's Forum about rebuilding a pair of Dayton Write ESLs:
https://www.martinloganowners.com/t...-high-output-electrostatic-loadspeaker.20052/
Propriétés électriques des frigorigènes de remplacement des CFC et des HCFC
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-7007(00)00016-5
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-7007(00)00016-5
Serious downsides to using HS6 (if I have that right). Not sure of the value of the benefits. You lose loudness with lower bias.
The gas and sealed mylar front and back produce a big bass boost, but a single pair will never be satisfactory without a woofer.
Might be my imagination, but I like the transparent super-clean sound of my free-air panels better than the DW stock units in the square box (hey, square bad acoustically, eh). And that's what I'd suggest to you, forget the gas and quite heavy mylar.
I think I've run free-air up to 6kv but seems comparably loud at 2.5kv.
My panels (with stock DW transformers, 2 spares still sitting around) are pretty capable down to maybe 120 Hz. With larger DW box, maybe lower.
On music, no loss of stereo even with a single mono woofer (even off to the side) below that, as some decades of experience tells me. With stereo woofers located near each panel, no issue at all.
Ben
The gas and sealed mylar front and back produce a big bass boost, but a single pair will never be satisfactory without a woofer.
Might be my imagination, but I like the transparent super-clean sound of my free-air panels better than the DW stock units in the square box (hey, square bad acoustically, eh). And that's what I'd suggest to you, forget the gas and quite heavy mylar.
I think I've run free-air up to 6kv but seems comparably loud at 2.5kv.
My panels (with stock DW transformers, 2 spares still sitting around) are pretty capable down to maybe 120 Hz. With larger DW box, maybe lower.
On music, no loss of stereo even with a single mono woofer (even off to the side) below that, as some decades of experience tells me. With stereo woofers located near each panel, no issue at all.
Ben
If you can't get or aren't willing to deal with the gas, the explanation may not matter much, but here's some info from the old Dayton-Wright website about what they considered the benefits to be:
"There is a limit set on the force which can be developed on a diaphragm operated in an air-system electrostatic. Because of the voltages and the small spacing usually involved in an electrostatic unit, sufficient voltage can be developed between the fixed electrodes to overcome the dielectric strength of the air in the gap - and arcing occurs. This limits the output of the unit.
By coating the fixed electrodes in an electrostatic driver with a medium resistance insulation; protection against arcing can be achieved. What happens is that at signal voltages below the arcing point, there is negligible voltage drop across the insulating coating, substantially all of the signal voltage appears across the electrode gap, producing a driving force on the diaphragm. But when the voltage breakdown of the gap is reached, there is sufficient current flow to cause an appreciable voltage drop in the insulation, reducing the voltage across the gap and preventing an arc - but also reducing the driving force on the diaphragm.
In other words the loudspeaker self-limits. Since the voltage at which breakdown occurs will be dependent in part, on spacing, manufacturing variations will give rise to a variation of this 'critical' signal voltage level-rounding off the limiting effect. But the result will be a unit lacking dynamic range - major transients will not be reproduced accurately.
If however, we operate the electrostatic cell in a gas having a very high voltage breakdown, we can get much higher outputs without having to resort to insulated electrodes. Let us cite a hypothetical example: If we were able to increase the breakdown voltage four times, we could use four times the bias voltage; which would be the equivalent of increasing the-driving power 4 x 4 or sixteen times; that is, it would increase the efficiency sixteen times (12dB); we could also increase the driving signal voltage four times; which would mean an increase in driving power of sixteen (12 dB). Thus we have increased the permissible output level 256 times (or 24 dB) before overload. By utilizing other properties of the gas it would be possible to increase this further.
Only the XG-8 units, of all the electrostatic units can therefore develop the high slewing rates normally found only in cone or horn speakers.
This is one reason that the XG-8's are capable of producing 115 dB levels 1 meter on axis, while most other 'pure' electrostatics are limited to about 100-103dB. Interestingly enough, the gas used behaves in a much more 'ideal' manner than air, causing lower distortion."
I suspect Mike's exponential power explanation is exaggerated. Anyway, you'd need vast power to drive the speakers to the loudness he's modelling.
Gas is a clever idea but also gives DW a commercial ( perhaps patentable) distinction that Mike certainly must have favoured.
Gas is a clever idea but also gives DW a commercial ( perhaps patentable) distinction that Mike certainly must have favoured.
They also claimed:
"HIGH POWER HANDLING
700 W TO 1 kW AMPLIFIERS NO PROBLEM
. . .
GOOD EFFICIENCY
50 W = 103 dB 1 m ON AXIS"
-------------------
As the manufacturer, obviously they want to advance their selling points, and the sulfur hexafluoride angle was theirs alone as far as I know, so it's an obvious thing to wrap marketing claims around.
Definitely patented. Here are a couple:
US Patent 3668336A Audio system including electrostatic loudspeaker, by William M D Wright, assigned to DAYTON WRIGHT GROUP Ltd
US Patent 3778562A Electrostatic loudspeaker having acoustic wavefront modifying device, by W Wright, assigned to DAYTON WRIGHT GROUP Ltd
I was thinking earlier that an acoustic lensing effect was somewhere in their gas story, but didn't see it on their old website. That memory may have come from the 562 patent, which discusses that aspect. Again, I don't know how impactful the effect is in practice, just that they claimed it.
"HIGH POWER HANDLING
700 W TO 1 kW AMPLIFIERS NO PROBLEM
. . .
GOOD EFFICIENCY
50 W = 103 dB 1 m ON AXIS"
-------------------
As the manufacturer, obviously they want to advance their selling points, and the sulfur hexafluoride angle was theirs alone as far as I know, so it's an obvious thing to wrap marketing claims around.
Definitely patented. Here are a couple:
US Patent 3668336A Audio system including electrostatic loudspeaker, by William M D Wright, assigned to DAYTON WRIGHT GROUP Ltd
US Patent 3778562A Electrostatic loudspeaker having acoustic wavefront modifying device, by W Wright, assigned to DAYTON WRIGHT GROUP Ltd
I was thinking earlier that an acoustic lensing effect was somewhere in their gas story, but didn't see it on their old website. That memory may have come from the 562 patent, which discusses that aspect. Again, I don't know how impactful the effect is in practice, just that they claimed it.
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I have a pair of DWXG-10 Mk II with the Panasonic leaf tweeter. I used them from 1980 to 1995 with HF gas. Mine were not that great in holding the gas. I think every 5 years I needed to top up. As far as efficiency went, even with the gas, you needed tons of power. I used a pair of bridges Hafler 220. Thing is that even when they played loud, the amps did not like them and sounded harsh above moderate level and depending how much midrange the music had. Bass output was never an issue, and any good recording with drums pretty much sounded real. I heard a lot of high end speakers, but never the just there bass with perfect transient control. The closest was those servo feedback woofers from Velodyn. But for me unaffordable when they came out. Over the years I found that the sound changed as the state of charge varied/, they had to be plugged in all the time because they took several days to fully charge. A full charge was audibly, you could hear the slight hiss of the corona and they efficiency was so high you could hear the HV power supply hum. Of course then you needed to low er the bias or the corona would create conductive paths and increase the leakage and making the cells unrepeatable (according to Mike Wright). But when they sounded good, I could only describe it as a window to the music, if you had the right recorded material. Crap recording sounded like crap. One more thing. I thought they had a certain tonality unlike any other speaker, but your mind completely ignored it after listening for a few minutes.
I decided to run the speakers without gas and resigned myself to just playing jazz and other natural recorded music. I had to turn the bias way down, to maybe 11 o'clock on the bias dial. What killed it for me was that cells started to die, more in one channel than the other. Some of it probably was my fault, I sometimes played them so loud that they would arc over on heavy bass transients.
After this I embarked on a project where I would rebuild them in a frame of my design, because it was pretty obvious if you hit the wooden structure the individual cells were mounted in, you could easily hear the resonance. It could have bee the cell resonances, but I devised a better way to mount them so that repair would be more easy. So even if the design and other things were done right, the frame holding them was not very sturdy.
It was huge work to take each of them out, so I only did one channel. Then I decided to take a cell apart to repair the diaphragm. I had talk with Mike many times. He told me what the diaphragm resistance should be, what semi-conductive liquid he used and where to get it. Also what glue to glue the Mylar on the plastic frames.
Basically I had all my duck in a row. I got a 1000 ft sample of HS65 Mylar from DuPont, got the liquid from the lab in the US and bought an electro-voltmeter that could read up to 10e14 ohms. After I drilled out all those rivets without damaging the plastic frame, I thought all this is crap-load of work. This was in 1999. Stuff came up and i never did anymore. Meanwhile a local audio store that i visited often had a pair of older speakers. I could not pass up the $200 sell price including delivery!
Then life intervened and I finally decided to do something with them. Naturally the company with the coating no longer exists, and the stuff I had was completely evaporated. There is pretty good crazy glue designed to glue Mylar to plastic nowadays. So here we are so many years later. I now have MartinLogan speakers and initially started a thread there with pictures and descriptions, before it all gets lost as DW website is no longer.
https://www.martinloganowners.com/t...-electrostatic-loadspeaker.20052/#post-213520
I decided to run the speakers without gas and resigned myself to just playing jazz and other natural recorded music. I had to turn the bias way down, to maybe 11 o'clock on the bias dial. What killed it for me was that cells started to die, more in one channel than the other. Some of it probably was my fault, I sometimes played them so loud that they would arc over on heavy bass transients.
After this I embarked on a project where I would rebuild them in a frame of my design, because it was pretty obvious if you hit the wooden structure the individual cells were mounted in, you could easily hear the resonance. It could have bee the cell resonances, but I devised a better way to mount them so that repair would be more easy. So even if the design and other things were done right, the frame holding them was not very sturdy.
It was huge work to take each of them out, so I only did one channel. Then I decided to take a cell apart to repair the diaphragm. I had talk with Mike many times. He told me what the diaphragm resistance should be, what semi-conductive liquid he used and where to get it. Also what glue to glue the Mylar on the plastic frames.
Basically I had all my duck in a row. I got a 1000 ft sample of HS65 Mylar from DuPont, got the liquid from the lab in the US and bought an electro-voltmeter that could read up to 10e14 ohms. After I drilled out all those rivets without damaging the plastic frame, I thought all this is crap-load of work. This was in 1999. Stuff came up and i never did anymore. Meanwhile a local audio store that i visited often had a pair of older speakers. I could not pass up the $200 sell price including delivery!
Then life intervened and I finally decided to do something with them. Naturally the company with the coating no longer exists, and the stuff I had was completely evaporated. There is pretty good crazy glue designed to glue Mylar to plastic nowadays. So here we are so many years later. I now have MartinLogan speakers and initially started a thread there with pictures and descriptions, before it all gets lost as DW website is no longer.
https://www.martinloganowners.com/t...-electrostatic-loadspeaker.20052/#post-213520
A few months ago, amidst some confusion in my affairs, ran my panels directly from the headphone jack on my 13 year old Mac laptop directly into the brutish Kenwood amp (class G, guessing around 1982). No DSP, no EQ.
One chart is REW combining L and R (but separately, panel traces look pretty much the same). Not bad considering the mic was near my chair in the centre of a rather small listening room. 1/12 smoothing. The horrible bumps and dips would all be different if I moved the mic a few inches: FRs get a lot more attention than they deserve. Sometimes I make curves by averaging 3 locations, a nice feature of REW.
The other chart is distortion. The two curves go down just as far as REW can take it in my house at that hour if nothing was playing. Not sure what it means exactly but "-60 dB" is 0.1% distortion showing up at the mic. Usually, 1000 ways to make bad looking traces but only one way to make true ones.
Hey, not bad for the headphone amp in my ancient laptop and an old cheap Behrenger mic mixer with phantom bias supply feeding the mic signal to a $20 Behringer DAC....not to mention my 1977 DW panels.
The sound was just as crystal pure as you'd think, given the miniscule distortion. Maybe not on organ music, eh. Treble wonderful, at least good enough for my failing aged ears (1940 model).
Maybe we need another thread to thrash-out the wonderful charms of boxless two-sided speakers.
One chart is REW combining L and R (but separately, panel traces look pretty much the same). Not bad considering the mic was near my chair in the centre of a rather small listening room. 1/12 smoothing. The horrible bumps and dips would all be different if I moved the mic a few inches: FRs get a lot more attention than they deserve. Sometimes I make curves by averaging 3 locations, a nice feature of REW.
The other chart is distortion. The two curves go down just as far as REW can take it in my house at that hour if nothing was playing. Not sure what it means exactly but "-60 dB" is 0.1% distortion showing up at the mic. Usually, 1000 ways to make bad looking traces but only one way to make true ones.
Hey, not bad for the headphone amp in my ancient laptop and an old cheap Behrenger mic mixer with phantom bias supply feeding the mic signal to a $20 Behringer DAC....not to mention my 1977 DW panels.
The sound was just as crystal pure as you'd think, given the miniscule distortion. Maybe not on organ music, eh. Treble wonderful, at least good enough for my failing aged ears (1940 model).
Maybe we need another thread to thrash-out the wonderful charms of boxless two-sided speakers.
Attachments
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That is why I plan to use my several pairs of the XG8 for Bass ( < 150Hz )
beside the great PioSound Eagle...
<problem with transformers regarding distortion is, that the main inductance is strongly dependent on signal level. This is going like this : starting from a low value (say 50mH for a bass transformer, this you measure with a L meter) inductance wil rise with rising voltage at the primary winding up to the point when core is starting to saturate (say 500mH).
This gives the current a distored part !
If the source (amplifier) and the primary winding had zero Ohms DC resistance this distored current would not (!!!) show up in distored voltage, but all the linear impedances in series to the transformer (cables, dc resistance of primary winding, amp output resistance, crossover network (!), capacitor) create a nonlinear voltage drop because of this non linear current flow through them.
This voltage drop is subtracted from the hopefully distortion free amplifier output and will result in a distored input voltage for the (inner) transformer inductance (measuring at primary winding with a thd meter will not measure distored voltage drop of its dc resistance).
so keep main inductance as high as possible from the start (lowers the distored current amplitude) and/or keep serial elements small lowers distortion.
Hope this was helpful..>
If there is interest I can/will contribute more here..
have fun, Philipp
Yes, the bass on DW speakers sounds very good. But it just doesn't go much below 45Hz. Many times, long ago, I was thrilled by AR-3 speakers in the demo room in Grand Central Station in NYC playing Saint-Saens "Organ" symphony. (The AR-3 is a bookshelf speaker with a 10-inch cone.) Many times at DIY audio people are ga-ga over bass guitar sound (typically 80 Hz).
DW transformers weigh 32 lbs. I don't think they saturate too much.
DW transformers weigh 32 lbs. I don't think they saturate too much.
Nice system invisible force.
@bentoronto, when the DW speakers are filled with gas, and you leave the 850uF capacitor that is inseries with the transformer, you get bassto about 30-40 Hz. But you need a big room and have the speakers 3ft/1m from back wall and maybe 2 ft from side walls. After I decided not to refill them, than of course its higher. The record that showed the amazing low frequency transient repose was "Turned on Bach" on the Moog syntheszer. Wow you can still buy it on CD
https://www.amazon.com/Switched-Bac...7b99da69951e3c4bab56b798bd6dc2a2&gad_source=1
@bentoronto, when the DW speakers are filled with gas, and you leave the 850uF capacitor that is inseries with the transformer, you get bassto about 30-40 Hz. But you need a big room and have the speakers 3ft/1m from back wall and maybe 2 ft from side walls. After I decided not to refill them, than of course its higher. The record that showed the amazing low frequency transient repose was "Turned on Bach" on the Moog syntheszer. Wow you can still buy it on CD
https://www.amazon.com/Switched-Bac...7b99da69951e3c4bab56b798bd6dc2a2&gad_source=1
Are you saying a recording of Carlos' Moog has low notes produced by DW speakers? Recordings are hardly neutral.
I'd like to see mic frequency curves with "30-40 Hz". Or possibly to hear opinions from somebody who has heard and felt the pedals on a some really really large church organs.
I'd like to see mic frequency curves with "30-40 Hz". Or possibly to hear opinions from somebody who has heard and felt the pedals on a some really really large church organs.
I am saying that playing that LP at the time on the new XG-10s in a sound room at Bay Bloor Radio in Toronto surprised me. I'd say this was 1978. After that I got myself a pair. Then i had no money left for an amp. I really wanted to play Tusk by Fleetwood Mac really loud, so I had to wait until the Hafler DH-200 was available and I bought two to run in bridge mode. Yep, it was finally load enough. Still have them btw. The speakers I heard were powered by a Perreaux 200W amp, way out of my price range. I finally found one on eBay and it arrived yesterday. The model is PMF2150B
And yes I have heard low pipe organs in my life. The last time was about 15 years ago in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig where Bach himself had played and composed on the same instrument. They played a nice piece and all of the sudden goosebumps. A low tone permeated the church and I realized it was the big pipes playing. A sound that is hard to describe unless you have heard it. Any box speaker always has distortion that colors it.
Here is a link from DW manual of the speaker I have. There are two curves on the chart, ignore the one with the subwoofer. The actually electrostatic is about 3dB down at 30 Hz. I myself did a quick test with a signal generator one time and I thought it was not as loud, but you need to realize that the hearing sensitivity falls off rapidly at low frequencies if you look at the Fletcher Munsen graphs
I am surprised this link still works.
http://www.dayton-wright.com/DWXG10sManual01.html
And yes I have heard low pipe organs in my life. The last time was about 15 years ago in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig where Bach himself had played and composed on the same instrument. They played a nice piece and all of the sudden goosebumps. A low tone permeated the church and I realized it was the big pipes playing. A sound that is hard to describe unless you have heard it. Any box speaker always has distortion that colors it.
Here is a link from DW manual of the speaker I have. There are two curves on the chart, ignore the one with the subwoofer. The actually electrostatic is about 3dB down at 30 Hz. I myself did a quick test with a signal generator one time and I thought it was not as loud, but you need to realize that the hearing sensitivity falls off rapidly at low frequencies if you look at the Fletcher Munsen graphs
I am surprised this link still works.
http://www.dayton-wright.com/DWXG10sManual01.html
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