University RRL-12 Speakers

A friend of the blog arrived this week with a pair of immaculately refurbished pair of University RRL-12 speakers. The RRL-12 speakers feature 12" woofer with Alnico magnets along with a 5 inch midrange with Alnico magnets and a wonderful dome tweeter.

This pair of University RRL-12 were lovingly and painstakingly redone with mint cabinets and crossover that have high quality Erse and Solen capacitors along with audiophile grade resistors.

With a little tweaking with the brilliance control on the back along with a little added bass and treble powered through a push/pull Electrohome Kalmar 120 tube amp and these speakers sound absolutely fantastic.

Once the equalization was figured out the sound was very open and transparent with incredible detail and depth, by depth I mean the 3 dimensional image of where the instruments and vocals have their place in the room. It is as if you are in the same room as the musicians, the clarity can only be realized with a tube amp.

This surviving pair of University speakers are a real gem to grace this audiophile blogger.

EPI 100V crossover upgrade

The EPI 100V is a wonderful speaker that has graced this blog an multiple occasions and this latest pair is another example of how a simple internal wiring and capacitor upgrade brings out the best in this speaker.

Once again the latest pair that I picked up got the royal treatment. One thing I did notice is that the woofer had been refoamed already with the distinct signature of Vancouver Audio Speaker Clinic all over it.

The old really thin speaker wire was replaced with proper thick copper wiring along with a Solen Metalized Polyester cap. I also like to add proper binding post to accept banana plugs.

This simple upgrade is a night and day difference and always worth doing.

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.

Energy 22 Tweeter replacement revisited

Back in November 2013 I wrote about a Vifa tweeter fix for a pair of Energy 22's and this post seems to generate the most amount of hits to this site.

I came across another pair of later generation Energy 22's that had their magnet structures fall apart. This pair was the later generation 22's that used a thick plastic baffle for the tweeter as opposed to the early versions that used an aluminum plate.

I use Vifa/Tymphany OC25SC65-04 tweeter that you can buy from Solen.ca in Canada or Parts Express in the USA.

The first thing you want to do is gently lift the foam cosmetic rings around the tweeter to get the 4 screws out. Try and save the rings as these are not replaceable unless you make your own.

The plastic face plate needs a small filling modification on either side to accommodate the leads of the tweeters.

I used a glue gun to fill in the 4 inner holes that once mounted the magnet structure.

Fit the tweeter in the original hole.

Hot glue is used to seal the tweeter in place and fill the holes.

 I soldered in leads to the original connectors on the back of the tweeter face plate so this can be an easy plug in with the existing internal wires.

Next time I will pay more attention to line the positive and negatives up better.

Now these are ready to be installed. I do not do any crossover modifications as this is a simple fix that gets the Energy 22's up and rolling again.

This Pair of tweeters is for sale if you need a replacement, please contact me a bankofdave@gmail.com

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.

Yamaha NS-690 Speakers

Another top of the line Japanese speaker arrived a while back the Yamaha NS-690 speakers built in 1972.

This was one of Yamaha's best selling speaker and was on the market a few years before the NS-1000 reigned supreme in the Yamaha line up.

according to the literature Yamaha engineered with a European sound and design in mind. these do look very similar to the Dual CL490's that I recently picked up.

These speakers matched best with solid state gear over the tube amp and I have paired it with the Noresco 2570 which sounds fantastic.

More on the history of the Yamaha NS-690 can be found here.