PSB 300 Speakers

It has been awhile since I posted and now that I got a small space to enjoy audio again a few things have come my way.

A 6.5 inch woofer and a Vifa T19 tweeter make up the drivers in this pair. The cabinet is a bass reflex to add a bit of bottom end ooomph.

These are definitely a nice compact bookshelf speaker that sound pretty neutral when driven with my push/pull tube amp. I will get a chance to hook them up to a Solid State amplifier soon and they should sound different, but with the tube amp they do everything nicely.

Open Baffle Isophon PH2132E

It has been a while since posting as life has had some significant changes for me in the past year. I had moved from Vancouver to Victoria and in the process downsized my speaker collection which unfortunately has been in storage.

Life is taking me on a different path at present and I do miss having my HiFi, I currently do not have the space to set everything up. I still have been scouring the internet and thrift stores but I find myself passing on lots of gear.

I do have a good collection of raw drivers and many projects in my head but these will wait until I have the space to return to them.

That being said I did sell my Isophon PH2132E with a pair of helper 12" alnico woofers to a HiFi enthusiast named Vlad.

He has since designed his open baffles with a bit of corroboration from me, I really like the way the project turned out.

I would have loved to hear these on my SET amp in my old man cave.

Celestion Ditton 33 Speakers

A mint pair of Celestion Ditton 33 speakers came across my path this week. These are very polite English 3 way speakers in beautiful Oak veneer.

Tannoy Oxford Gold Open Baffles for sale

I need to make room for more speaker creations and I am in the process of letting go of these speakers to make room for new ones.

These Tannoy Oxford Gold speakers are wonderful sounding and I think they sounded better out of the wooden cabinets than in.

I am asking $300.00 for the pair, the caps have been upgraded only and the veneer is a really nice Rosewood.

Once you have listened to an open baffle speaker it is hard to go back to a boxed speaker, if you are a true audio lover.

Email me bankofdave at gmail if interested.

Shipping will be at the purchasers expense.

Admiral Turbo Reflex Speakers

Here is something that flies under the radar for almost everyone but there is a dedicated following for this speakers, super ugly and cheaply made cabinets. It is what was inside and the design that counts.

These speakers use Coral 12RG06 full range 5.25 inch woofers and a tweeter crossed over with a 1uf capacitor. The boxes are a back horn loaded design with the chamber that goes back and forth across the internals three times producing outstanding bass. The sound from a tube amp defies how cheap and ugly these speakers seem to appear.

In that respect I have salvaged the drivers and kept one box to rebuild this design in decent boxes, I have enough Foster 4 inch drivers also to make a few pairs of folded horn loaded speakers.

 

Six months and plenty of change

This corner of the blogsphere has been silent as what was a great man space that often looked like this........

and had many great speakers, amps, beers and scotches of the years came to an end. Almost all the gear was sold off and what was left went into storage as a major shift in my life occurred.

Slowly this blog is re emerging with emphasis on building speakers, open baffles and back horn loaded using full range newer and vintage high efficiency speakers suitable to working best with tube amps,

I have moved from Vancouver to Victoria and have been scouting the area for decent gear but mostly come across the same stuff as before but at highly inflated second hand market prices, so I pass on a lot of it.

I have come across some gems though, stay tuned.

Philips 22RH480 Speakers

This pair of Philips 22RH480 speakers recently caught my eye locally, I have not been in the market for new gear recently but these speakers have a lot of right elements in their design that caught my attention.

There is not a great deal of information on these speakers in North America, a few French blogs have some info.

From what I learned so far is these are circa 1969 vintage, Philips product did not make it to the North American market very often probably due to a lack of distributors, so these could have come over via an estate.

The Philips 8" woofers have cast baskets, Alnico magnets and rubber surrounds, there is a nice Philips 4" full range with a whizzer cone acting as the mid range and a Coral horn tweeter. The cabinets are the the Dutch mid century design style with walnut veneer cabinets.

In my mind all these components add up to make a very nice speaker.

Although a little shy in efficiency for a 2 watt single ended tube amp, they do sound sweet, next I tried the 20 watt push pull tube amp, but this was not as nice of a sound.

The new Yamaha CR-420 that I picked up this week sounded really nice with these speakers.

Since the cabinet is a acoustic suspension design the 8" woofer is tight sound with respectable bass as the cabinet size is a decent size. The mids with the 4 inch full range and whizzer are really nice and the Coral tweeter adds just enough sizzle at the top end.

Over all this is a pretty impressive speaker from Europe, a really good mix of components seem to work well.

I like the gems like this that get overlooked in the market place as everyone is stuck on Pioneer HPM's or JBL's


Jan. 8 2018

A little update:

I have been running these speakers for a few days off the SE Tube amp 2WPC, These speakers have pretty solid bass down to 50hz and roll off from there, the bass is really tight. The mid range is luscious without any hints of nasal or chestiness in vocals. The Coral tweeter does the highs in perfect fashion.

Overall these speakers remind me in some senses of what you would get out of a Braun speaker, polite, correct and smooth. The difference is the cone mid range with the whizzer, it will beat the big Braun dome anytime in my view, and that is a pretty tall order.

These speakers seem to command a pretty respectable resale on the used market and I can understand why if you are serious about your hi-fi, that is it for now, I got more listening to do.