Which Tannoys, folks?

[Alex_UK]

Brilliant work Paul, I hope you're very pleased and proud of yourself!

[walpurgis]

That's a very posh looking pair of speakers you ended up with Paul, if you went into a Tannoy dealer's showroom and saw those you'd expect an £8000 price tag.

You've done a blinding job! Hope they give you the satisfaction that amount of thought and work deserves.

Well done mate!

[jandl100]

Yep, a work of art indeed. A fabulous job.

£8k? - from the photos ... £10k, £12k, you wouldn't bat an eyelid.

And I do like a curvy derriere.

Get 'em 'voiced' to your satisfaction and I will grace them with my presence.

[myles]

I concur.........beauties, you must be very proud of your work.

[Marco]

Yep, a work of art indeed. A fabulous job.

£8k? - from the photos ... £10k, £12k, you wouldn't bat an eyelid.

+1 (with bells on)!

Paul, this says it all:



Marco.

[The Black Adder]

I guess the curved backs are to stop standing waves, a great idea.

[Reffc]

Thanks guys.

Yes, the curvy shape is to reduce the risk of standing waves. The internal top and base panels aren't parallel for the same reason. Unfortunately I have overdone the padding so today I'll be removing the monacor lambswool wadding from the middle chamber and removing the acoustic foam from the base and seeing if I can cut down the thickness in the top. I didn't put any wadding or foam on the front baffle in the end which was the right decision. The deficiencies in the crossover are showing as the mid's too recessed but we'll see what some wadding removal does (so starts the black art side of things!) In a way I now wished I'd just placed the wadding in instead of gluing it! That way I'd have been able to remove a little at a time with ease until I had the cabinets voiced properly. It'll be a knuckle scraping butchering exercise now

Played Mahler's 5th transcribed for Organ works last night and the bass of that big organ pipe from Gloucester Cathedral was rattling all the light fittings and the doors! They certainly dispel the myth that vintage Tannoys don't do bass. Upper mid range and HF is fine too and crystal clear. You can play these LOUD without internal resonances making them sound hard and distorted. Some tinkering needed over (probably) months but I'll get there with them and know now what I need to do to get the next pair spot on first time!

[realysm42]

How does that big drive do anything other than bass?

[Reffc]

How does that big drive do anything other than bass?

Because it's a dual concentric Tannoy HPD unit Martin. It's a full range set up.

[Reffc]

Well this morning I am absolutely delighted to report that after nervously ripping out almost all of the lambswool wadding, just leaving the acoustic foam, and a square of lambswool directly behind the dirver, the balance is back, the mid range hole is plugged and they sound simply STUNNING. Possibly the best loudspeakers I've had in this room at any rate. Remarkably colouration free and you can drive them painfully loud without the sound distorting or breaking up at all. Bass is very well integrated, but for a little more bass slam the ports could be shortened by 25mm. I'll leave as is for the moment though and perhaps order some more ports of various lengths to have a play with. The usual bass hump that gives commercial speakers "slam" isn't there. Instead it's remarkably well integrated (a little like big Harbeth M40's playing in large rooms). You can feel the low notes but there's no boom and bass has real texture to it. Perhaps we've become conditioned to manufacturer's tuning tricks of wham, bam, thank you mam at the expense of accuracy?

The volume needs turning up a fair bit more than it did as the bass sensitivity is slightly down with EBS tuning, but they still play quietly very well indeed. It's only when they're turned up that you get that close-to-live experience courtesy of very low distortion levels. Pretty chuffed overall