Every vintage Tannoy owner should read and re-read this. The most useful post on Tannoys ever!
Tannoy Chatsworth - Damp the cabinet or damp the drivers?
- Thread starter eastone
- Start date
Every vintage Tannoy owner should read and re-read this. The most useful post on Tannoys ever!
cooky1257
pfm Member
What vintage Tannoys do you use Jair?
1970s vintage, Berkeley's.
Lockwood hard edge reconed about 10 years ago. They work well near a rear wall and have fantastic childproof grilles. Small for Tannoys but huge in comparison to almost everything else. It's worth it. Easily.
cooky1257
pfm Member
The Berkerleys aren't exactly light, high density chipboard veneered both sides with a baffle to (none removable) back ply brace and as their panels are smaller they are significantly more rigid than the stock Arden of same vintage, the bitumen pads dotted about the inside curl up and crack/dry out over time-ceasing to do their intended job too. So do you run your drivers 'not tightly bolted into the cab?
Yes. There was an article (online diary) ages ago describing an an enthusiasts attempts to build an improved cabinet (Tannoy cabs are so often, usually unfairly I think, called the weak links) for his Tannoy DCs. IIRC he used Baltic Birch plywood, and meticulously went about constructing the best possible cabinet he could in his attempt to improve the bass end. The result? A flat lifeless sound that had him mystified until he recalled reading about the bolt attachments in vintage Tannoys.
So he redesigned the attaching bolts and voila! A massive improvement all round. Like many others I didn't want to mess around with cabinet damping/bracing etc but I was willing to try the simple loosening of the four bolts per speaker.
It worked brilliantly. The bass started playing tunes, and the slight harshness in the bass/ treble region seemed to disappear.
Tony's post brought all the memories back. Even those regarding the Harbeth approach (breathing cabinets, hand tight driver fixing etc). I would urge any Tannoy owner concerned about thick bass or harsh treble to try it, you have nothing to lose, just mark the bolts with pencil before loosening if you want to reverse them later.
We would all do well to remember those Tannoy engineers were very bright and its not that easy to improve upon their designs.
Hope this helps.
cooky1257
pfm Member
Never a truer word. They never designed their enclosures to be vibrating wardrobes-a quick search through their vintage enclosure plans shows quite intricate corner jointing, panel bracing and 3/4 ply stock. The fact that some weren't that solidly assembled isn't a design feature. Each to his own for sure and I for one tend to avoid 'Linn tight' and go for just-tight plus a bit!