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Update

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It has been a long time since I was at this forum that I thought it would be a good place to put an update since things are changing.

I used to have my own forum where I would do this kind of update, but sometime last year it was hacked. Pretty funny actually - Geddes Speakers became a site for Jihad from the Syrian Cyber Army. At first I thought it was a joke, but then I found that I could not get rid of it. I am not a sophisticated IT guy so all I could do was shut down the site. I asked the site people to help, but they washed their hands of it saying that my "IT people needed to sort things out". The forum software vender later wrote me an apology for this as it was a flaw in their software that allowed it. From the tone of the note I believe that I was not the only one to have this problem.

At any rate that forum is now gone.

So what is happening now? Almost two years ago I had a bicycle accident where I landed on my shoulder and tore my rotator cup. Over these two years I have had several injections and the pain gets less and less all the time. But for most of this time I could not do speaker work for more than a few hours a day without serious aggravation of my shoulder. The last few months have noted an almost complete recovery.

During that time I looked at my business and decided a few things. First, I could not make as many speakers (volume) as I used to for several reasons. I decided to stop making the lower end products, the Harper and the Nathan, as the margins in these were simply not worth the effort. Once the parts ran out I would no longer offer these products. The Harper has already run out and is NLA (No Longer Available). There are only a few Nathans left.

The current Abbey remains unchanged although in the future partial kits or kits altogether may be deleted. I am undecided.

I recently started to remake the flagship Summa. This is an all-new product and represents the best speaker that I have ever made. It is unfortunately rather hard to make as the size exceeds what my shop can easily handle. It is therefor quite a bit more expensive, and there won't be any kits because the construction is just too difficult.

On the drawing board is an all new Abbey, which uses the larger waveguide from the Summa, a new neo compression driver from B&C and their new Neo 12" woofer. Several new construction techniques that worked so well on the Summa will also be used. These drivers are an improvement over the older ceramic ones, albeit at elevated prices. This new Abbey may well exceed the performance of the Summa, only time will tell. Its price will be about 50% more than the current Abbey owing to the higher parts cost as well as the more difficult construction. Again, kits will not be available because of the difficult construction.

These days the queue is not too bad, but it is still a few months. There will never be a case where you can just order the speakers and have them shipped because each speaker is made to order.

I had also put out some feelers about someone taking over my business but there weren't any serious offers. Mostly they wanted to pick and choose and use my name and then throw me a bone and have me go away :rolleyes: - not interested.

Any questions, please post them here.
 
Hi Earl. Thanks for update.

What compression drivers are you going to use in combination with NBX woofers ? Are you considering DE500 ?

As i understand, this will be a Summa-Abbey hybrid - where would xover frequency be in regard to original Abbey ?

Can't wait to see pics and measurements on your site :) cheers
 
I am going to go forward with the DE500. Its not markedly better than the DE250, but it is smaller and lighter.

The crossover points are never fixed in advance of doing the crossover - they are a variable that has to be adjusted based on actual measurements to yield the best overall performance.

The new Summa "looks" exactly like an Abbey in a photo. You can only tell a difference when you see them side by side, and then the Summa is much bigger. But they are practically scaled models of each other.
 
I saw you in the hallway at one point and thought, hey, that guy looks a lot like Earl Geddes, but what would he be doing here? If I had known, I would have said hello.

There indeed was very little to get excited about. But it costs little (for us in the Chicago area) to find out if this year is different.
 
I do occasionally check out what others are doing, hoping, like you, that something useful can be gleaned. Doesn't happen often I am afraid. I loved talking to the guy who was selling the cables that were surrounded by a magnetic field or something like that. He was like an old time preacher. Maybe audiophile are now more gullible than Christians. Last year I went with several other people, but I doubt that they will be going again this year.
 
I think that from this point forward all of my designs will use the MiniDSP line. It just makes so much sense when you can buy 8 channels of DSP for $500, you can do everything from crossovers to sub EQ etc. all in the one unit. This is too good to not use throughout.

I can always do a passive crossover if that's all the customer can contend with, but the active is always going to be more effective.
 
Earl, What kind of glue I can use to fix the foam to the painted waveguide in my Abbeys? It got detached during transport. Is it easy to change the passive crossover into an active setup? I have a DEQX unit which I wanted to try but I am also planning to buy a mnidsp 2x4 for setting 4 subwoofers up. I hope the minidsp unit is as capable as DCX2496 you recommend. I find the DCX too much shiny and industrial looking. Both of these units can be used with REW measurement software.
 
dziemian

I use 3M Spray 99. I don't know if it is available in Poland. The foam plug is polyurethane and won't be damaged by most adhesive materials.

It is not at all easy to change from passive to active crossover. I suggest that you don't do it. Doing your own crossover is more likely to result in a worse situation than just leaving it passive.

If you get in touch with me directly I might be able to help you with the crossover, but I have never sent speakers to Poland so I know that you did not buy them from me.
 
Thank you Earl for your reply. I am suprised there is no other speaker of yours here in Poland. I bought my Abbeys a couple of weeks ago from an original owner in Germany. I can give you details in PM if you need any confirmation as I dont want to post it here. According to the owner he bought them directly from you in 2012. I have a CD with the whole history of the build including an email exchange with you.
 
BTW. My Abbeys sound fabulous. The best speakers I have had so far. But they do lack of heavy bass and subwoofers are necessary. I am in process of building 4 passsive ones to set them up according to Earl's recommendation.

Yep. You need a LOT of subs to keep up with one.
I used a single Summa for PA at my wedding, along with a horn sub.
The Summa was just loafing along with about 50 watts. I had about 150 watts going to the horn sub, and it was the weakest link in the chain.

If I had to do it all over again I would've used about four subs and about 500 watts, and that's to keep up with ONE Summa, not two!

At one point I had something like eight subs at home, but that got a little ridiculous.
 
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