I can add nothing to the tec side here, but I have listened to Kings at 2 different shows, the last time in LV at THE Show. I thought they were great sounding stats. Unfortunately the King room was always quite full. It was impossible to sit down, someone was always talking, etc. You couldn't get the finer details. But they were besides all that quite impressive.
They also have a great stat tweeter horn. With a pair of those you could fine tune your imaging. Being separate they are also as DB up as you want. A separate amp, gain control and a built in L-pad you can tune the things to wherever you want and they probably go so high that you could blow out your ears without hearing it. They'll make your dog howl!
The big panels were very impressive though and I would love to listen to a pair under better circumstances. I hope you get these put back together.
I don't know that it makes any difference but in LV there was a guy there touting the speaker cables. They were those real wide braids where the crossing wire has to go across about 3 inches of what looked like 18 gauge or so wound copper in clear sleeving. With the crossing at 90* every 5 cm or so it would knock out the inductance of the twisted strands. Whether or not that is a good thing for stats I have not a clue.
They also have a great stat tweeter horn. With a pair of those you could fine tune your imaging. Being separate they are also as DB up as you want. A separate amp, gain control and a built in L-pad you can tune the things to wherever you want and they probably go so high that you could blow out your ears without hearing it. They'll make your dog howl!
The big panels were very impressive though and I would love to listen to a pair under better circumstances. I hope you get these put back together.
I don't know that it makes any difference but in LV there was a guy there touting the speaker cables. They were those real wide braids where the crossing wire has to go across about 3 inches of what looked like 18 gauge or so wound copper in clear sleeving. With the crossing at 90* every 5 cm or so it would knock out the inductance of the twisted strands. Whether or not that is a good thing for stats I have not a clue.
thanks thatch. Mine are a very early version. The current Kings use PCB stators I hear.
I replaced one of the midrange HVPS with a spare that reads 5.8KV.
The other was actually ok. I was just not making contact with the meter as its pretty cramped.
The other bad news is that when Rob (ER audio) had a look at a burnt bass panel he put his high res meter on the diaphragm and couldn't measure anything. Checked his meter on one of his panel and retried and it was the same.
It looks like the coating is loosing conductivity which explains the recessed bass/midrange. I am using a Bryston 4BST on the woofer panels and an old panasonic pro amp on the tweeter with a Rotel RB1080 on the TL subs. The mids are over 5db down on the other 2.
All the tweeters seem OK and the previous owner hadnt changed any out.
The very high bias current used may be a reflection of this degrading conductive coating and very heavy diaphragm?
It looks like it may be a fair bit of work to get these panels going properly.
If I do I would probably need a lower bias current as my ER Audio ESLIII panels don't take much more than 2.5KV.
kffern
I replaced one of the midrange HVPS with a spare that reads 5.8KV.
The other was actually ok. I was just not making contact with the meter as its pretty cramped.
The other bad news is that when Rob (ER audio) had a look at a burnt bass panel he put his high res meter on the diaphragm and couldn't measure anything. Checked his meter on one of his panel and retried and it was the same.
It looks like the coating is loosing conductivity which explains the recessed bass/midrange. I am using a Bryston 4BST on the woofer panels and an old panasonic pro amp on the tweeter with a Rotel RB1080 on the TL subs. The mids are over 5db down on the other 2.
All the tweeters seem OK and the previous owner hadnt changed any out.
The very high bias current used may be a reflection of this degrading conductive coating and very heavy diaphragm?
It looks like it may be a fair bit of work to get these panels going properly.
If I do I would probably need a lower bias current as my ER Audio ESLIII panels don't take much more than 2.5KV.
kffern
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I feel a bit stupid now - the recessed midrange was a result of my choice of crossover on the mid panels. Its much better now.
kffern
You can horn load an ESL, but you will not get the efficiency gain you might expect in the mid and low frequencies.
At higher frequencies it can improve efficiency.
Another purpose of the horn may be to tailor the directivity or polar response.
It's been quite a while since I updated. I have one pair with all new woofer panels and the 15" OB all hooked up. Powered up with a minidsp 2x8 kit (equivalent to the 4x10) tri-amped. I have it pretty well tuned in and enjoying it.
The other pair has the better of the old panels with x/over. Running with a 2x4 minidsp with a bit of boost to the lower midrange sounds pretty good in a smaller room. Decent 50Hz using stereophile CD.
Finally (after getting the ER panels working) managed to repair one of the many blown panels. Using 12micron mylar and Licron spray. Slightly modified the bias supply by putting it on the spacer and running the foil all around the panel. I can get up to 3.4kV with the rebuilt whereas the original panel goes over 5kv. Efficiency seems better with my panel though and just leaning up o the floor it seems to sound better. Running it in for now....
Now the strange thing is that with the surface res. meter I got from ebay I can't measure anything on any of the working original panels I have opened. Yet they work! Licron spray measures 10^8 to 10^9 on my panels.
Finding the right glue was difficult. CA seemed to vanish on the surface of the spacer. Polyurethane was too thick. Eventually used PVA but it took days to dry. I have some ZAP PT56 canopy glue for my next attempt. Anyone tried it? It worked OK on an experimental piece. If that fails I'll get some of Robs Poly. glue. Since I have many working panels I'm not in a rush. Anyway I would have to change them all out if they work at different voltages.
In case you have forgotten the original mylar seems thicker than 12 micron and has a murky thick, darker looking coating.
Rebuilding a TD160 TT plus a TT power supply or 2 as well so slow progress.
Regards,
kffern
The other pair has the better of the old panels with x/over. Running with a 2x4 minidsp with a bit of boost to the lower midrange sounds pretty good in a smaller room. Decent 50Hz using stereophile CD.
Finally (after getting the ER panels working) managed to repair one of the many blown panels. Using 12micron mylar and Licron spray. Slightly modified the bias supply by putting it on the spacer and running the foil all around the panel. I can get up to 3.4kV with the rebuilt whereas the original panel goes over 5kv. Efficiency seems better with my panel though and just leaning up o the floor it seems to sound better. Running it in for now....
Now the strange thing is that with the surface res. meter I got from ebay I can't measure anything on any of the working original panels I have opened. Yet they work! Licron spray measures 10^8 to 10^9 on my panels.
Finding the right glue was difficult. CA seemed to vanish on the surface of the spacer. Polyurethane was too thick. Eventually used PVA but it took days to dry. I have some ZAP PT56 canopy glue for my next attempt. Anyone tried it? It worked OK on an experimental piece. If that fails I'll get some of Robs Poly. glue. Since I have many working panels I'm not in a rush. Anyway I would have to change them all out if they work at different voltages.
In case you have forgotten the original mylar seems thicker than 12 micron and has a murky thick, darker looking coating.
Rebuilding a TD160 TT plus a TT power supply or 2 as well so slow progress.
Regards,
kffern
A horn acting as an impedance transformer is an obvious requirement for drivers shaking heavy cones to make sound. But what sort of horn would be beneficial for shaking Saran-Wrap? Rear sealed chamber? Sharp flare?
ESL are pretty good. Here's a panel with about .5% (around -46dB mostly) THD. Kind of hard to measure better acoustic results with real-world listening environment* and amateur tools, eh.
Ben
*like if somebody flushes a toilet in the next house or an airplane is anywhere near
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