Tannoy IIILZ

[spendorman]

My friend has a nice pair of these, unfortunately, one front grille cloth has a tear about 1 1/2" long.

Is it easy to replace the material on these, how is this done?

Where can one get some suitable vintage looking cloth?

Thanks

[struth]

Dont know the speaker but its usually reasonably simple to replace cloth. Depends what you want material wise but the are available on ebay as well as other places. I usually use carpet glue to hold it to the frames.

[spendorman]

Thank you Grant, but I should have mentioned that there are no removable false fronts on these speakers. Geoff will probably know about them.

My vintage corner Chatsworth enclosures are built like this, I think. Fortunately the cloth on these is still fine.

[struth]

looks like the fronts come off via screws front the inside. ie take back off, and remove fill. not as terrorising as it sounds. take driver out of course first.. That kind of material can be got from MainlyTannoy on ebay. will find a pic of one of my full rangers that have similar set up

[spendorman]

looks like the fronts come off via screws front the inside. ie take back off, and remove fill. not as terrorising as it sounds. take driver out of course first.. That kind of material can be got from MainlyTannoy on ebay. will find a pic of one of my full rangers that have similar set up

Thanks Grant.

[struth]

http://imageshack.com/a/img661/5484/GNWt1Q.jpg

http://imageshack.com/a/img905/5185/fbpKEC.jpg

http://imageshack.com/a/img911/4205/KSviXB.jpg

[walpurgis]

The cloth is stapled and glued to the front baffle which is secured to battens by screws accessible from inside. There is no exact match available in cloth to these, however Paul (RFC trade) may be able to help with something of suitable appearance.

If the baffles are removed and the grille cloth carefully taken off, it may be possible to make an almost invisible repair to the tear, which would be nice for originality. I'd suggest laying the cloth on a flat board front side up, aligning the torn edges and getting them against each other, then taping firmly in place with masking tape. Then turn the cloth over and dab acrylic adhesive onto the torn edges and across the tear with a cocktail stick. Allow a few hours to harden well then remove the masking tape very carefully. The cloth should hopefully be reuseable.

I use this for repair work: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/140513137590?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT It's incredibly strong, but you have to work fast. It will become unworkable in about a minute. Sometimes it's best to use batches.

[struth]

There is that iron on glue dust that you mix with bits of frayed material from edges. it can make a convincing repair too

[spendorman]

Thank you Grant

[spendorman]

The cloth is stapled and glued to the front baffle which is secured to battens by screws accessible from inside. There is no exact match available in cloth to these, however Paul (RFC trade) may be able to help with something of suitable appearance.

If the baffles are removed and the grille cloth carefully taken off, it may be possible to make an almost invisible repair to the tear, which would be nice for originality. I'd suggest laying the cloth on a flat board front side up, aligning the torn edges and getting them against each other, then taping firmly in place with masking tape. Then turn the cloth over and dab acrylic adhesive onto the torn edges and across the tear with a cocktail stick. Allow a few hours to harden well then remove the masking tape very carefully. The cloth should hopefully be reuseable.

I use this for repair work: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/140513137590?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT It's incredibly strong, but you have to work fast. It will become unworkable in about a minute. Sometimes it's best to use batches.

Thank you Geoff, that is a very good guide. The speakers in question belong to my friend Peter Anderson, and he says thank you too. Peter is a member of the forum but has not been posting lately as he has forgotten his password and can't seem to log in. Peter own the very rare Radford STA20 Mk III.

That suggested repair to cloth I pretty well did to a BC1, with the exception of the glue, I just used ordinary PVA wood glue.

[struth]

He has various colours but this is the most popular...beige

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152132439142?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&var=451329563680&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[walpurgis]

The acrylic adhesive is way stronger than PVA. It's not particularly cheap, but it is excellent stuff. A repair is likely to be stronger than the surrounding cloth.

I've used it for all sorts of things. It bonds metal to metal well.

[spendorman]

The acrylic adhesive is way stronger than PVA. It's not particularly cheap, but it is excellent stuff. A repair is likely to be stronger than the surrounding cloth.

I've used it for all sorts of things. It bonds metal to metal well.

Thank you, that sounds good. A bit like the Polish inventor that invented the strongest glue in the world, couldn't get the top off the bottle. I am allowed to say Polish because I'm half Polish. Dad came over here before WW2.

[spendorman]

He has various colours but this is the most popular...beige

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152132439142?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&var=451329563680&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Thank you, two colours look sort of suitable, Peter would have to recover both fronts of course.

[walpurgis]

There are interesting grille cloths on US eBay sites. Worth a look if the original can't be sorted.

[spendorman]

Thank you, I will pass that on to Peter.

[DSJR]

The IIILZ's will need cabinet work too to sound any good, but that's another story - check for buzzy back panels.

[danilo]

Gonna take a wee bit more than new boxes to Patch the 10's.
They cleverly fitted a 2.5" LF cone voice coil to the standard tannoy 2" diameter Wave guide.
The resultant gap mismatch is right in the middle of the Prime Voice frequencies.
10's were Tannoys' stepchild product
Takes some skilled/careful machine work to turn a suitable ali transition piece... then fit it.

[spendorman]

Why did they use a larger diameter voice coil than the other units?

[Reffc]

Why did they use a larger diameter voice coil than the other units?

The III-LZ was designed as a near field monitor, not a full range hifi speaker for far field listening. Tannoy wanted to preserve as much of the detail to about 1.5KHz as possible (ie within the middle of speech frequencies) so chose to run with a 2.5 inch voice coil for the LF for greater control and smoothness up to this point. They retained the 2 inch horn. The response problems didn't really happen until around 6KHz up to which point the III-LZ remains a remarkably smooth and linear performer, so it ticked all the right boxes for a near-field monitor and still does.

However, when applied to hifi use there is an issue above 6kHz where a phase inversion is present. This is caused by the gap between the end of the horn and the end of the voicecoil (ie opening of the main cone) where a short section of tube is parallel sided. It is this section of parallel tube which causes phase inversion of the HF unit. By then, the main LF does very little, and since both horns suffer the same phase inversion, the listener hears absolute phase inversion and not relative phase inversion, so for all practical purposes, it is rarely an issue except for measurement, and this is what may forget when describing them.

However, the issue can be resolved completely by smoothing he horn using something like a flexible car body filler (great care and skill needed!) so that its mouth exits at the end of the voicecoil tube.

For what it was designed for, the III-LZ remains fit for purpose although the cabs, as with most Tannoys, do benefit from some stiffening and improvements to internal damping.

[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.

[Marco]

Indeed - what a wonderful system! It would shame many modern set-ups these days ;)

Marco.

[spendorman]

Unfortunately, I sold the 12" Silvers, that I put in the MS700 cabinets, but I still have almost everything else.