Tannoy IIILZ

[spendorman]

Thank you, that is very interesting, Does anyone offer this mod with car body filler as a service? Peter may be interested, I think he might be hesitant to try this himself.

People often regard car body filler as a bodge, but correctly used it is a very useful material.

In the early 70's I made a pickup arm from aluminium, duralumin, stainless steel and brass. I was a bit stumped as what material to use for the headshell.

Made a mould out of plasticine and sort of cast the headshell out of car body filler. Machined that a bit. Result was excellent.

[walpurgis]

In the standard cabinet the bass extension of the IIILZ is pretty limited to say the least. Even mounting in a bigger box does not deliver much more.

[Reffc]

Thank you, that is very interesting, Does anyone offer this mod with car body filler as a service? Peter may be interested, I think he might be hesitant to try this himself.

People often regard car body filler as a bodge, but correctly used it is a very useful material.

In the early 70's I made a pickup arm from aluminium, duralumin, stainless steel and brass. I was a bit stumped as what material to use for the headshell.

Made a mould out of plasticine and sort of cast the headshell out of car body filler. Machined that a bit. Result was excellent.

I wouldn't recommend it unless there's a specifically audible issue up at the frequencies of a traingle being "dinged"! It is above 6 KHz after all, so unlikely to be much of an audible issue. There is no real issue within the mid band where response should be smooth. They are not a hifi speaker for far field use but rather oriented towards broadcast use and used as a broadcast monitor. They would be fine for near field low level listening but you can't do much with them to make them into a decent far field hifi loudspeaker. Best left as they are as money is better spent on something like the HPDs in proper cabinets. 10 inch MGs or HPDs in something like a Chatsworth cabinet are particularly nice loudspeakers with far more to recommend them for general use.

[spendorman]

So, a sort of Tannoy LS3'5a.

Peter has both LS3/5a's and the IILZ's.

I like the idea of 10" in the Chatsworth caninet. Always thought it was a bit small for the 12". Years ago I had Monitor Silvers in a Chatsworth size cabinets, moved them into larger cabinets (Mordaunt Short MS700 cabinets), and they were much better.

I still have some empty corner Charsworth cabinets, intending to put the units from my Tannoy Devons in there at some point.

[walpurgis]

Best left as they are as money is better spent on something like the HPDs in proper cabinets. 10 inch MGs or HPDs in something like a Chatsworth cabinet are particularly nice loudspeakers with far more to recommend them for general use.

I agree with that. The 10" HPD 295A is very nice (the original HPD 295/8 has issues though).

[walpurgis]

I still have some empty corner Charsworth cabinets, intending to put the units from my Tannoy Devons in there at some point.

That should be good. The boxes may need a bit of bracing though. They are a bit lively.

[spendorman]

That should be good. The boxes may need a bit of bracing though. They are a bit lively.

Yes, the backs especially, I suppose if they were close fitted into the room corners with felt or foam in-between, this would be good.

[Reffc]

Yes, the backs especially, I suppose if they were close fitted into the room corners with felt or foam in-between, this would be good.

Some internal bracing and damping will sort them. Pushed into corners raises LF output as the baffle step is cancelled and the cabs then effectively use the walls as a form of boundary loading. How it sounds depends on the room. You may get a cleaner sound with them close to rear walls for bass reinforcement and pulled away from side walls if corner placement doesn't work well. Corner placement though with anything other than true horn speakers usually has detrimental results in sound quality, even though certain frequencies can be boosted. I know that one popularised speaker manufacturer (no names) specifies corner placement but that is more likely to achieve claimed bass efficiency than for any form of SQ improvement or accuracy and is not regarded as generally a good thing to do.

You also have to consider speaker placement spacing as corner loading with boundary gain almost certainly will result in some destructive interaction between speaker outputs and boundary gain, relative to the wavelength and frequency, so whilst you'll achieve significant net gains compared with free space in the bass, the response will also suffer by being far less even. Rarely does corner loading result in accurate sound unless in a very large room using horn speakers where the wall does effectively become an extension of the horn. This is not the case with Tannoys at lower frequencies.

[spendorman]

The 12" Silvers in Chatsworth enclosures were my late Uncle's about 1970. They sounded lovely in his system.

I believe that the system was chosen between him and his friend Jim Rogers (of the Company), who supplied it. It consisted of The Tannoys, Rogers Master power amp and pre amp, Rogers Ravensbourne tuner, Thorens TD124 II, Ortofon RS212 arm, Ortofon SL15E. It is still one of the best sounds that I have heard from Hi Fi.

I may still have the Rogers Developments receipt for the TD124.

[Reffc]

The 12" Silvers in Chatsworth enclosures were my late Uncle's about 1970. They sounded lovely in his system.

I believe that the system was chosen between him and his friend Jim Rogers (of the Company), who supplied it. It consisted of The Tannoys, Rogers Master power amp and pre amp, Rogers Ravensbourne tuner, Thorens TD124 II, Ortofon RS212 arm, Ortofon SL15E. It is still one of the best sounds that I have heard from Hi Fi.

I may still have the Rogers Developments receipt for the TD124.

That would still be a lovely sounding system today Alex.