QUAD ELS 57 in for a service

[Barry]

Stacking Quad 57s has advantages as well as disadvantages.

The most obvious advantage is the sheer palpable sense of presence that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up - akin to the sound of a good sample of a Decca cartridge. Once hard it is hard to go back to a single pair.

The second advantage is doubling the number of speakers doubles the maximum output. OK, so a maximum SPL of 106dB is still not enough but it does help with dynamics and scale. And although the bass response remains unchanged, subjectively the bass performance does appear improved.


The downsides? Well the obvious one is that stacked Quads are visually imposing - in my case they would block out most of the light from the patio doors behind them. Second, wiring the stacked speakers in parallel means above 10kHz the load impedance will drop to less than 2 Ohm. Not many amplifiers are happy running into such loads. Valve amps will fare better, but the best way is to use identical two channel amplifiers for each stacked pair.

But the difficulty of most concern is the exact stacking geometry. Quad, amongst others, recommend maintaining the curve of speakers, or perhaps arranging for both speakers to be vertical. The problem is Quad 57s have very narrow dispersion in the vertical plane (+/-15 degree), and doubling up the speakers by stacking in the vertical plane will exacerbate the 'letterbox' effect. Better to arrange the pair so that the lower speaker is tilted slightly forward with the upper speaker tilted even more forward so that the two treble beams reinforce one another at the listening position. Clearly this will require a fair amount of experimentation, but it will be worthwhile.

So if you have the room, amplification that can handle the difficult load and the patience to experiment, stacking Quad 57s can create an illusion of the original performance that once heard, little else will be found to be as satisfying.

[JohnG]

The second pair of stacked Quads, that I heard recently, which were the Original Version, had been stacked on a weight lifting frame, a frame type that is used for resting the weight bar during Squat Exercises.
The frame is rigid, robust and strong, and will certainly cause a few memorable moments, if being sold to
' Ones Better Half ' .
I research the frames after, and thought they are reasonably priced, having a wider market if a resale is required. They are multi adjustable, in relation to width and height, and I recall working out a couple of further easy to achieve adaptions, that I thought would improve on them for a further adjustments to help fine tune the alignment of a Stacked 57 Set Up.

[dpgals]

Got my speaker back from Steve at OTA yesterday after the fitting of new treble panel and clamp board. Sounds great now. I will probably get the other speaker serviced in a similar fashion in the New Year so I will then have a perfectly balanced pair. The service from Steve was fantastic and the work he carried out was very really reasonably priced. Thanks Steve - really appreciated!!! The speaker should be good for another 10 years at least now I am sure. As said before if anyone wants to hear the sublime match of the Croft OTL amp with the QUADS more than happy to demonstrate if you are up in York area. Maybe I should bring the combination down to Shalford - would be best is show to my ears anyway!!!!!