Heybrook Heylo - any good?

[keiths]

I'm looking for a very cheap, compact floorstander for a smallish room. Must work well hard up against rear wall.

Has anyone heard the Heybrook Haylo? I used to own HB1s years ago and got on well with them.

There's a pair of Heylos on eBay at the moment:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230569351074&category=3276&_trksid=p5197.c0.m619

[DSJR]

These date from the time when solid core was fashionable and feature low gauge wiring and very low wattage resistors, which may have been useful as fuse-alternatives. I think these will do exactly what you need, but the crossover bits ought to be brought up to a HiFi standard before listening to them seriously ;)

HB1's covered their tracks so well, but in my experience covered up for deficiencies further back in the system too. The lack of fine resolution in an Armstrong 621 was totally smothered, for example.

[keiths]

These date from the time when solid core was fashionable and feature low gauge wiring and very low wattage resistors, which may have been useful as fuse-alternatives. I think these will do exactly what you need, but the crossover bits ought to be brought up to a HiFi standard before listening to them seriously ;)

HB1's covered their tracks so well, but in my experience covered up for deficiencies further back in the system too. The lack of fine resolution in an Armstrong 621 was totally smothered, for example.

A bit of searching reveals that there's a 2R7 resistor (0.5 watt! :lol:) and a 4u7 capacitor in the crossover. Maybe that's all as I seem to recall Heybrook were advocates of simple crossovers. So probably not too expensive to replace with good quality bits. May well take a punt on these.

Regarding the HB1s; I guess their forgiving nature was the reason for their wide appeal - just look how many times they got a mention in the "10 enjoyable loudspeakers" thread.

[keiths]

I bought these and they arrived today.

First impressions - ugly little buggers, but sound very nice indeed. Not the last word in detail maybe, but they go much deeper than the Mission 771e I was using and sound very well-balanced. Nice and easy to listen to (just plonked them down and wired them up intending to listen to just the one track to check they were working OK before fitting the spikes and experimenting with positioning - but ended up sitting back and listening to a couple of whole CDs).

Pretty good stop-gap solution for me for £64.50.

Not had a peek inside yet to see what's in the crossover, but will do soon.

[Macca]

Looks like a lot of 'speaker for sixty-five squid. Nice one!