A lot of people concur with myself vis a vis styling
Just to be blunt, the only styling there is is the color or lack of the acrylic. The rest is based on them being a copy of James originals.
I had a few helpful people telling me that if they were smaller they would be better, or made of different material (though there was no specific definition as to what that would be). You have to just grin and put up with it.
Though the one of the two chaps from Lowther who came to check and chat, suggested they could make me a pm6a without the wizzer cone as I was rolling them off at the top. That might be a thing to try.
Little known fact, coherent thought can destructively interfere with itself leaving no thought at all, that’s why I prefer incoherent thought.
Nice that the lowther folks are out and about.. at shows of course
The tube manual is quite like a telephone book. The number of it perfect. It is useful to make it possible to speak with a girl. But we can't see her beautiful face from the telephone number
Yes, re.Lowther, I went in their room on Saturday pm, they had a team of three there. I got stuck in and started fondling the drivers on the table. I think there was a DX3, a PM2A (heavy - nice !) and a 5" without a whizzer cone, which was interesting, although Neo rather than alnico. It was something they'd done recently for someone.
They had corner horns, an update ( 'TP2' ) of the old TP1's, with PM4A's, they were good but didn't surprise me as I'd hoped. Partly the treble is rolled a bit without a tweeter and with the doorknob plug. You probably have to get your ear attuned for a while to hear the strengths.
As far as Nick's go, they had the expected dynamics, microdynamics and uncoloured midrange. The bass/mid is crossed differently than mine ( in fact the whole thing is different since I bi-amp for the tweeters ) and James's , so I could hear some pros & cons. It's difficult to remember exactly what was good, but I remember some things in the upper bass catching my ear as being better. On the bass and timing, i found it a bit confusing. We listened to 'Full Circle' ( Czukay ) second side, and on the first track, I felt the bass was a bit out of synch ; but on the second track which is very bass-driven it sounded spot on.
The speakers were handling the room very well, not much evidence of any modes - Nick, Andrew and I all agreed on this.
Treble was interesting and a bit different to mine, no doubt partly due to the bullet tweeters. It was generally very good , but in comparison to my ribbons it seemed a bit level dependant, and a little too aggressive to my ears at louder volumes. On quieter tracks it was lovely, very clean and resolved, the tweeters are obviously extended and with low distortion. It's possible that the level dependence could come from the Lowthers , but I don't know how steep the LPass on this is ( Chris ? ) .
"Forever fair ... and I'm touching your hair. I wish we could be dreaming .... in this dream" ( Morrison )
First order, Mark, and fairly high up IIRC - knocking off a couple of dB at 5kHz-ish.
Difficult to define "aggressive", but there are a few things that might be happening. Some of them psychoacoustic, some of them inherent in the drivers.
Thanks... OK, that might be relevant.
On the other hand, the level-dependence could easily be my ears, which aren't happy these days above a certain level !
"Forever fair ... and I'm touching your hair. I wish we could be dreaming .... in this dream" ( Morrison )
Daniel Quinn wrote: ↑Mon Jun 20, 2022 7:45 pm
I understood they were to a commercial enterprise for sale .
This was the only reason for my comments vis a vis styling. If they were simply your speakers the comments on style would be superfluous .
Its a bit ambiguous, they are mainly to scratch my own itch. But as we where at a show I would be happy to make another pair for someone. I was also just considering putting the plans up on the web and that being that.
But what I mean was for them to have styling, it would (or should) have involved some conscious decisions on someones part, James may have had some, but certainly I didn't, all my work and interest was to initially replicate the original Quasar, but as time went on the plans shifted as documented here, but physically the body of the things were the same.
Little known fact, coherent thought can destructively interfere with itself leaving no thought at all, that’s why I prefer incoherent thought.
First order, Mark, and fairly high up IIRC - knocking off a couple of dB at 5kHz-ish.
Yep, I had a conscious decision how close it would be to the peak from the Lowthers. I didn't want loose it altogether as I wanted a taste of that character to be there. I will follow up on the pair without the wizzers though and see where that goes.But as I have said to Chris several times, the goal wasn't a perfect speaker (I know that that way lies madness) I wanted it to be broken in an interesting way.
Little known fact, coherent thought can destructively interfere with itself leaving no thought at all, that’s why I prefer incoherent thought.
Though I should also say that literally everything else used in the system at the weekend was different from what we used at Colins's or last Owston with the wood versions. So it would be unfair to suggest with any certainty that the acrylic was the important factor.
Worth repeating that the original aim of this work was I wanted to replicate what James had made in terms of visual and hopefully audible effect. So the choice of using transparent acrylic was burnt into the plan from the start. Colins wood mules were only ever intended to be that, so were not made to a standard that Colin would normally aim for if they were made to be final things. Also worth pointing out that the original hope of using a cheaper full range driver (though them being hugely popular it seems on social media) was an abject failure. As to a large extent was the attempt to replicate the series xover James made use of. Whether the audible results bear comparison I cant say for certain, other than that I am more than happy with the results.
Little known fact, coherent thought can destructively interfere with itself leaving no thought at all, that’s why I prefer incoherent thought.
I thought they were excellent and I could easily live with a pair. There were many comments on the good sound, I particularly liked the nimbleness of the mid, a Lowther trait, and they could certainly boogie on down when the music called for it.
