Celestion DL6

[technobear]

The Freecycle gods have smiled on me today

I picked up a rather unlovely and desperately unloved pair of Celestion DL6. They had been in this guy's loft and were in a right state. Very dusty, covered in spider pooh and looked like they were ready for the skip. Fortunately they had their grilles on. Oh well, nothing ventured, etc. so I brought them home.

First, do they play. Well sort of. The surround of one was hanging off the basket so I glued it back on. The other looks OK. Now they play! Not bad at all

Four hours of scraping, scrubbing and polishing later and they are now unrecognisable from their former state. They have come up beautifully. Just waiting for the grilles to dry out before I put them back on.

They sound bloody lovely

[Reid Malenfant]

They are pretty decent speakers if the truth be known. Overdamped rear ported bass reflex if I remember right You'll be pretty impressed with them as long as you don't move them more than a few feet from the rear wall, as they need a bit of wall assistance to bring up the low bass as they roll off like a sealed box from about 60Hz.

I'm kind of gutted I got rid of mine to a friend in all honesty. Then he got burgled & lost all his kit & records... No doubt he was more gutted than I was


Well done for getting them for free

[technobear]

Overdamped rear ported bass reflex if I remember right

Your memory serves you well. They have that critical reflex alignment that means the bass cones hardly move even when rocking out to some Led Zep or Orbital.

I'm using them about 8 inches off the back wall, either side of the telly and they don't want for bass. They rock quite impressively too - much more authoritative than the Jamo's - proving once again that when it comes to speakers, size matters!

The bass is strong and quite tuneful, bordering on boomy at times, great for low-level listening, perhaps I won't need an amp with tone controls afterall. Listening to this I'm tempted to keep the Croft.

Not to get carried away they're never gonna convince anyone that there are real musicians in the room (as the Zu's could do at times) but they have a nice sense of atmosphere to them where the Jamo's are a little laid back and slightly muffled. I'll bet they are gonna be just fine for movies.

[Rare Bird]

[Reid Malenfant]

@ Andr'e...

Pull them out from the wall gradually Chris & you'll find that they won't boom as much When I had mine I pulled the bass drivers out & measured there parameters (nice cast alloy chassis by the way), so I could see what they were doing & how come they performed so well.

That's how I know they roll off like a sealed box having also measured the enclosure & tuning frequency. They'll start to go out of phase at about 30Hz, but there is usable bass down to that frequency as long as you set them up right. They'll never do stupid volume at 30Hz though but 40Hz should see them doing a pretty high output

[DSJR]

They sound good because THEY ARE BLOODY GOOD!!!

From an era not dominated by far eastern two-a-penny generic boxes, but desigbed for a market by engineers who listened and WHO CARED enough to make a great cost-performance compromise, hence no ported boomy thud masquerading as bass or a fizzed up glossy sting acting as treble.

I don't know how much longer the DL range will remain sleeping, but in my book they're light years forward from the likes of Ditton 15's, Counties et al, even if they don't look particularly "retro" as yet...

Has anyone tried the Ditton 150's? These were an update on the 15XR and featured several improvements to the bass driver as I recall, which should have taken away some of the colouration...

[technobear]

There's a test sticker on the back of each one

It says 16/5/87 so that makes them 24 years old

[Reid Malenfant]

It says 16/5/87 so that makes them 24 years old

Nicely run in then

[Darren]

My first speakers when I was 17! I auditioned them against Tannoy Mercury (awful wallowy bass) and was told that if I didnt like the Tannoys I would hate Hebrook HB1s.......

The DL6 sounded great on the end of my NAD3120. Hope they give you as much pleasure as they gave me.

[DSJR]

I heard Tannoy Mercury's years later and the wallowy bass they had with vinyl seemed significantly reduced with "live" radio and digital sources in fairness to them. the late 90's "Mercury" series were rather horrid though, cos that fine midrange disappeared, along with the treble