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Ultimate speakers for electronic organs and Hauptwerk

Started by David Pinnegar, March 13, 2016, 10:41:10 PM

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David Pinnegar

Having been playing with electronics and hifi of one sort or another for years I've found intense dissatisfaction with most speakers installed with electronic organs and as a hobby I repair and refurbish some of the most interesting units ever produced by a British hifi firm.

In the course of this, I've found some gems.

For one friend asking me about speakers for a very domestic environment I recommended a pair of Tannoy DC2000s and he's been very pleased. These work quite well for trumpet stops and have quite a bright top end . . .

But there's another solution that gives much more presence - the feeling that the instrument being reproduced is actually there at the mouth of the loudspeaker. This is to buy a pair of either
Celestion Ditton 15
Celestion Ditton 200 or
Wharfedale Laser 120 units. These all have 8 inch woofers and a tweeter and are quite low efficiency. The Ditton 15 has woofer, tweeter and auxiliary bass radiator whilst the other two have two 8 inch units, one serving bass and the other midrange. I take out the ABR of the Ditton 15, and move the bass unit to the bottom slot, or with the other two, take out the middle unit serving midrange - and then insert in its place a modified full range unit wired in parallel with the remaining speaker from the amplifier fed by a 100uF or 47uF capacitor. The modification I carry out enlarges the secondary whizzer cone of the full range unit giving an amazing presence to instruments - and letting the low efficiency woofer and tweeter augment the ends of the spectrum. The result is good. But there's better.

A friend who's been playing with speakers from before I was born has designed a speaker that really does give ultimate sound.

The top horns are based upon a variation of the 60 year old Lowther TP1 design in the form of the Prophecy Audio horns by John Richardson http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/prophecy_horns_e.html . He only made four pairs and by chance I happen to have bought his prototype many years ago from my friend Michael Wallis. These horns bring the sound alive. They are performance speakers and the instruments are aurally in front of you rather than any awareness of mere reproduction. The problem with these horns is what to use below around 150Hz . . .

Michael has now solved the problem: . . .


and particularly without bass resonances.

Best wishes

David P

revtonynewnham

Look good David.  Sadly, I have very little room in my music room, so couldn;t get anything like that in.

Every Blessing

Tony

David Pinnegar

Do I recall letting you have a pair of full range units for something? How did they fare?

Best wishes

David P

revtonynewnham

Hi David

Yes you did - they are in Lowther "Bicor" cabinets (a rear-loaded horn design).  Excfellent speakers - but VERY large both in terms of floor area (the problem in my music room) and height.  They sound excellent - until we moved I used them pretty much daily for general & serious listening, nd also with my Nord C2D & other electronic keyboards.  The bass response tails off somewhat in the bottom 1/ 2 octve of the 16 ft register - but that might be down to room position - they were well away from the corners.  I suspect corner placement might solve that.  I still have them - not sure at present what I'll do with them, but I'm hoping I can find somewhere suitable to use them.  If I had floor space, I'd use them in the music room with no problem - they'd do the job nicely.

The problems of downsizing!

Every Blessing

Tony