JPW Ruby 2 - a hidden gem!

I was lucky enough to buy this lovely pair of JPW Ruby 2 speakers yesterday evening. These are ultra-rare in Australia!

Given that there's not a lot of information about them on the net, nor half-decent pics of the insides, I figured I'd take a few pics and provide more information.

To the best of my knowledge, the Ruby series were JPW's attempt at proper high-end speakers, and were designed on the premise of delivering a fast, responsive and detailed sound. JPW and Monitor Audio apparently had somewhat of a legal tussle over the Ruby name, as both manufacturers had a 'Ruby' series for sale at the same time..

The drivers used include a proprietary metal coned 6.5" woofer called the BMR180 which was designed and manufactured by Audio Electronics in England, and a metal-dome SEAS tweeter. As you can see, the red metal coned woofer ties in with the 'Ruby' name given to this series of speakers.

The crossovers feature point-to-point wiring and are glued to the binding post panel. Decent quality ICW polyester film caps are used throughout (ICW, incidentally, produce the Clarity Cap range of capacitors too). There is scope for upgrading the series tweeter capacitor in particular, but I don't think the rest really need to be touched unless funds permit. I do have some suitable AXON polyprops gathering dust which are the correct value for the tweeter cap. Hrmmm...

My particular speakers hark from 1999 according to the serial number on the rear binding post panel. According to Hifi World Magazine, they were around 400 pounds when new in the UK in 1998, and around $1200 in Australia, or about $1800 in today's money.

The cabinets feature lovely genuine timber veneer which, apart from some minor fading of the front panel, has aged remarkably well. The cabinets are near mint. The underlying cabinet construction is MDF with thick chipboard bracing and foam lining.

They do sound wonderful - nicely detailed, excellent imaging, a very deep sound stage (possibly better than my Focus Audios FS68s in this regard). They also sound 'bigger' and give the impression of effortlessly reproducing the music vs the FAs. I suppose that this is to be expected given the larger cabinet (400mm x 220mm x 250mm) and the larger woofer. There's no replacement for displacement!

I do believe that the FAs are a bit more accurate, coherent and refined overall, but I definitely need to spend more time enjoying both pairs of speakers over the coming weeks to decide which speaker stays and which speaker goes.

At this early stage, there is no clear winner between these two speakers, as each is very competent indeed and each sounds different, but neither is necessarily better than the other.

Now for the big decision... which speaker stays and which speaker goes? ;)



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I've also just checked the tweeter. It is the SEAS 25TAC/GW with a tuned chamber around the rear of the tweeter to achieve a lower resonant frequency than the more commonly used 25TAF/G:

http://www.subaudio.org/download/seas/h0417_25tacgw.pdf

Good speakers mate. Do you know they were constructed by inmates doing time over here.

I've read that, but I wasn't certain as to whether this only applied to the lower-spec series or also the top-line Ruby series.

After a long listen and comparison session earlier in the week, the Rubys won't be taking centre stage in my main rig. My Focus Audios are a class above. However, these will be auditioned by a good friend over the coming weeks, and I hope he decides to buy them. They truly are a very good speaker, especially for the kind of dollars that the can be picked up for on the used market.

I also replaced the polyester cap in the tweeter circuit with a polypropylene cap and these seemed to slightly improve the performance of the tweeter. As always, without A/B comparisons, this kind of comparison is a real crap-shoot.