Hello all,
some of you looking at "bargains on eBay" may have seen my post about the £500 Tannoy Cheviot 3128 speakers I just bought.
They were collected yesterday and I had a brief demo at the showroom. They sounded bloody marvelous! Even with sagging cone surrounds and an occasionally rubbing coil on one. These are definitely 'proper Tannoys'.
The ceramic magnet 3128 driver is also used in the Tannoy Balmoral and is a long throw, lower resonance version of the SRM/LRM 12" unit, very different to the 12" HPD driver in most Cheviots (I've owned those in the past too).
At the moment, I'm refurbishing the rather tired looking cabinets, removing paint spatters, repairing veneer chips, and restaining prior to the satin finish going on. I intend having these looking as close to new as possible.
The original grille cloths have no holes, but quite a few snags/pulls. This is easy to sort, just push them back through the fabric with needle pointed tweezers. They don't show then.
Strangely, one plinth is half an inch shorter than the other. It has been sawn down, presumably due to damage. I'll restore this to size with some hardwood cut to fit.
Two sets of cone surrounds are on order, along with various adhesives. I've bought foam roll surrounds as per original and a set of fabric double pleat surrounds as used on the SRM/LRM series drivers. I will decide which to use in due course.
The crossovers will be checked and maybe upgraded and I shall be rewiring the speakers with something decent, possibly bypassing the plug & socket into the driver.
This being the very last incarnation of the Cheviot, it conveniently sports a set of reasonable looking banana sockets instead of wire grippers. Nice, I won't have to alter that.
If I can work out how to upload some decent photos, I shall show some of the work in progress.
Geoff.