Wharfdale Delta 30 Speakers

This entry level Wharfedale Delta 30 came my way this week. A nice little 6 1/2" woofer with a textile dome tweeter.

This speaker is a pretty good offering sound wise although the lime green motif is not my favorite. these speakers are very neutral and a little shallow in the bass department. Women vocals are smooth and the sound is very British, very good in the mid range. Imaging was good for their size.

I am sure these competed well against the B&W DM100i, the Mission 700 Leading Edge, EPI A70 or the Acoustic Research AR 18B featured on this blog before. My favorite out of the bunch is the Acoustic Research AR 18B.

Now that I have the Rotel RX-830 back from repair these speakers would match up well with a British designed amp for a starter system.

Acoustic Research AR 18B Speakers

My second pair of Acoustic Research speakers to grace this blog the AR 18B speakers. My last pair was a pair of AR-15's that needed extensive restoration.

The AR 18B is a early 80's refinement of the AR18 and AR 18S, this pair uses well matched woofer tweeter combo where a single 5uf cap is used for the roll off for the tweeter at 4000hz. The woofer is designed to roll off naturally.

This pair needed a re foam given that they are 30 years old and I figured a new Solen 5uf cap was pretty easy to replace and upgrade.

Straight forward these speakers sound much better through the Noresco 2570 than they do with the tube amp. There is ample bass from the 8" woofer and very smooth across the lower mid range. The upper mid range is a little less forward, perhaps laid back. The high notes are typical of a cone style tweeter that tend to roll off reducing the crispness that a dome tweeter produces. Cymbals sound a little blurred when A/B comparisons with the EPI A70 speakers. The efficiency of the AR 18B's is reported to be 86db at 1 watt which could benefit from a mid range power amp of 25-50 watts per channel.

Over all these are a nice compact bookshelf speaker that seems to have a small cult following on the interweb machine. Some even some go on to say that these have been used in studio's in lieu of the Yamaha NS-10's.

March 23 update:

I had a good long session with these speakers through a Single Ended tube amp, and these speakers really do sound fantastic, the front to back imaging is spot on and they cover the mid range perfectly. This is a great little speaker for tight space and is one I would seek out on a regular basis.

EPI 100V Speakers

Another wonderful pair of EPI 100V speakers arrived yesterday, following the EPI C70 that arrived a few days earlier.

Any reader of this blog knows that I am a fan of the EPI 100V speaker. These speakers are very musical and do just about everything right. Lucky for me both pairs have been re foamed already, I will open them up and replace the 10uf capacitor with a Solen metal polyester type along with adding banana plug terminals and upgrading the internal wiring..

I spent time with the EPI A70 and the EPI 100V stacked last night and all I can say is WOW!, not often does one get a chance to listen to these speakers in this configuration. One can not put it into words.

I have been powering it through the wonderful Noresco 2570 receiver which I find it to be an absolute gem of a receiver. I have a new agenda to keep my eyes open for more Noresco receivers or Rotel receivers of this vintage, these are worth picking up, believe me.

EPI A70 Speakers

The second time I have had this wonderful little speaker from EPI, the EPI A70. The first pair I had was a earlier version of this speaker the EPI 70C. 

This pair was pretty mint for its' vintage and had been re foamed already by Peter at A-Tech Electronics locally. This is the last in the line up of the inverted dome EPI speakers before they went to the Time/Energy series.

I will replace the original 10uf cap inside with a Solen cap along with upgrading the internal speaker wire and I will add 5 way binding posts.

As with all EPI products before the T/E series, these are well built with matching woofer tweeter combination that requires very little in the crossover design. These EPI's along with the 100's are among my favorite bookshelf speakers.