Tannoy Monitor Golds
- Thread starter Tony L
- Start date
cooky1257
pfm Member
The HPD's(same chasis) and 3828 kits recommend mounting on a sub baffle see under HPD Series tech info + cabinet info here http://www.hilberink.nl/speaker.htm#tech
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
lexi,
If you're building new cabinets why not go as big as you can fit into the room? If you trawl the Net you'll find schematics for the biggest of the big old Tannoys: GRF rectangular pros, GRF corner and Autographs.
It seems to me that the biggest issue is whether your (or your chippy's) cabinetry skills are up to making an elaborate back-loaded horn.
Joe
If you're building new cabinets why not go as big as you can fit into the room? If you trawl the Net you'll find schematics for the biggest of the big old Tannoys: GRF rectangular pros, GRF corner and Autographs.
It seems to me that the biggest issue is whether your (or your chippy's) cabinetry skills are up to making an elaborate back-loaded horn.
Joe
Yes Joe the work in the big corner Grf etc is a bit complex. GRF-R I can handle no bother.
Cooky
I got them sub baffles on Berkley that are a bit bigger than driver. Bloody crap they are
I stiffened mine cabs up no end. Extra 18 mm back and bottom plus metal u channel T braces internally from side to side.
Proper Sub Baffle should be full length I think. Saw your cabs on Yahoo? very nice
Cooky
I got them sub baffles on Berkley that are a bit bigger than driver. Bloody crap they are
I stiffened mine cabs up no end. Extra 18 mm back and bottom plus metal u channel T braces internally from side to side.Proper Sub Baffle should be full length I think. Saw your cabs on Yahoo? very nice
cooky1257
pfm Member
Yes Joe the work in the big corner Grf etc is a bit complex. GRF-R I can handle no bother.
Cooky
I got them sub baffles on Berkley that are a bit bigger than driver. Bloody crap they are
Proper Sub Baffle should be full length I think. Saw your cabs on Yahoo? very nice
Wise move re the Berkerleys they drum like an erm... drum without extra bracing.
FWIW I've got both Arundel clones and 215 clones over on Hans' yahoo site.
Tony L
Administrator
Thanks - I'm beginning to formulate a plan. I found another guide here that takes account of keeping the weave parallel to the edge, which with the type of cloth I ordered will be important to get them looking right. My plan so far is to follow these instructions, i.e. to take great care aligning the top and bottom prior to doing the sides and I'll try using some double sided tape to help position the cloth prior to stapling, I'm hoping that may enable me to be able to re-jig it a bit if it's not right before stapling and act as a 'third hand'. By not using glue I can really go slowly and carefully, I don't care if it takes me a day to do them, I want it to look right!
Tony.
PS I'm really liking these speakers!
Don`t do that! If your wife comes in and catches you blow drying the speakers she will write it down in a book. That can be used as evidence in any future divorce procedings.
I used low tack tape and applied Ostrich feathers to the 15 inchers once..............just to check the cone movement . During a mad passage from Mahavishnu Orch. when the feathers were going crazy the wife came in and caught me...............it went in the book
......there`s lots of stuff in it (she tels me).
Hazelberry
sister
What a great find!
And gone to a great home. Enjoy!
And gone to a great home. Enjoy!
Tony L
Administrator
I’ve had the Tannoys for a week now, so perhaps time to get some thoughts in order…
What do they do? Move air. They can actually do bass. It’s hard to articulate what I mean here, but other than Isobariks they are the only speaker I’ve ever owned that can create a bass guitar / double bass / bass synth in the room with any degree of realism, i.e, I recognise the instrument as the one I play, not the feeble facsimile that normally emerges from domestic hi-fi. They stop what they start without overshoot too, this is nice tight and fast bass, certainly better than anything I got out of the Briks. I’m not talking about volume here, I still listen quietly, I doubt they have been over 80db since I’ve fired them up - I’m just not a volume freak at all. What I mean is the low notes are low and they are really solid and tangible. There are very few speakers indeed that can do this IMO.
This solid foundation at the bottom seems to make all that sits above function in a different way. Stuff just sounds more real. There are many records that just snap into focus in a way I’ve never heard before. A huge amount of the music I love will have been mixed and mastered using some variation of these drivers and I suspect that shows, i.e. I’m probably getting closer to a control room sound than I’ve had before. They are big, deep, tight and effortless. I likes them.
What do they not do? They are very directional. I guess it's easy to forget that you are listening to a pretty narrow compression horn above about 1Khz. I’d say they are no less directional than the Heresys and certainly sound ‘blunted’ way off axis, surprisingly so from the chair in the window bay (the first picture of this thread was taken from there). Next to no top end in that location! Personally I don’t rate this as a negative, I think Paul Klipsch talked a lot of sense about firing the sound directly at the listener so it gets there long before the reflective sound. They certainly sound very clean in the way good horns seem to IME. Reading around the net I get the impression they don’t have much treble, but I’m 46, so neither do I.
What’s to do? Other than skinning the grills (I now have most of the parts) nothing for a good while. I’m really happy with them so they’ll be left alone for a long, though I’ll probably do a ‘like for like’ replacement of the one electrolytic cap on the crossover. I don’t plan to tweak them though, just restoration.
Future? I plan to learn about cabinets as the ones they are in, whilst superbly built, are theoretically way too small. I suspect they come in at about 80L, I believe 300L is the recommendation. They are also getting on for a foot too low IMO, I’d like to bring that horn up to ear level. A few ideas have crossed my mind varying from the simple to the ridiculous: get some wooden legs made / get a plinth made. The latter route would enable me to increase cabinet volume in an ‘SBL’ manner if I wanted by drilling some holes in the bottom of the existing cab. The most ridiculous idea that’s crossed my mind would be to do as above, but drill some holes through the floor too and effectively vent them into the cellar below! I guess that would effectively put them in free-space as far as the driver was concerned but infinite baffle as far as the listener is concerned – a f***ing huge cabinet without actually having a f***ing huge cabinet in the room. Food for thought, but before that I want to try and understand what different sized cabs will do for the sound. I assume it can only effect the bass as all above is a compression horn that just won’t care at all. As is these are anything but bass-light, they have real weight and heft, so I don’t want ‘more’ bass. I need to learn how the sound is effected by the cabs, i.e. what to expect with any changes.
Tony.
PS regarding the other stuff: it will be hitting the charity room as stated, I’ve just been pressed for time. The FM2 has gone; 75 quid for the gorillas on it’s way shortly. The rest will come when I’ve had time to clean and photograph it. I’ll also need to think about packing for some of it as the only boxes I have that will take the TD-150 and cassette deck are ones I want to keep for my own kit.
What do they do? Move air. They can actually do bass. It’s hard to articulate what I mean here, but other than Isobariks they are the only speaker I’ve ever owned that can create a bass guitar / double bass / bass synth in the room with any degree of realism, i.e, I recognise the instrument as the one I play, not the feeble facsimile that normally emerges from domestic hi-fi. They stop what they start without overshoot too, this is nice tight and fast bass, certainly better than anything I got out of the Briks. I’m not talking about volume here, I still listen quietly, I doubt they have been over 80db since I’ve fired them up - I’m just not a volume freak at all. What I mean is the low notes are low and they are really solid and tangible. There are very few speakers indeed that can do this IMO.
This solid foundation at the bottom seems to make all that sits above function in a different way. Stuff just sounds more real. There are many records that just snap into focus in a way I’ve never heard before. A huge amount of the music I love will have been mixed and mastered using some variation of these drivers and I suspect that shows, i.e. I’m probably getting closer to a control room sound than I’ve had before. They are big, deep, tight and effortless. I likes them.
What do they not do? They are very directional. I guess it's easy to forget that you are listening to a pretty narrow compression horn above about 1Khz. I’d say they are no less directional than the Heresys and certainly sound ‘blunted’ way off axis, surprisingly so from the chair in the window bay (the first picture of this thread was taken from there). Next to no top end in that location! Personally I don’t rate this as a negative, I think Paul Klipsch talked a lot of sense about firing the sound directly at the listener so it gets there long before the reflective sound. They certainly sound very clean in the way good horns seem to IME. Reading around the net I get the impression they don’t have much treble, but I’m 46, so neither do I.
What’s to do? Other than skinning the grills (I now have most of the parts) nothing for a good while. I’m really happy with them so they’ll be left alone for a long, though I’ll probably do a ‘like for like’ replacement of the one electrolytic cap on the crossover. I don’t plan to tweak them though, just restoration.
Future? I plan to learn about cabinets as the ones they are in, whilst superbly built, are theoretically way too small. I suspect they come in at about 80L, I believe 300L is the recommendation. They are also getting on for a foot too low IMO, I’d like to bring that horn up to ear level. A few ideas have crossed my mind varying from the simple to the ridiculous: get some wooden legs made / get a plinth made. The latter route would enable me to increase cabinet volume in an ‘SBL’ manner if I wanted by drilling some holes in the bottom of the existing cab. The most ridiculous idea that’s crossed my mind would be to do as above, but drill some holes through the floor too and effectively vent them into the cellar below! I guess that would effectively put them in free-space as far as the driver was concerned but infinite baffle as far as the listener is concerned – a f***ing huge cabinet without actually having a f***ing huge cabinet in the room. Food for thought, but before that I want to try and understand what different sized cabs will do for the sound. I assume it can only effect the bass as all above is a compression horn that just won’t care at all. As is these are anything but bass-light, they have real weight and heft, so I don’t want ‘more’ bass. I need to learn how the sound is effected by the cabs, i.e. what to expect with any changes.
Tony.
PS regarding the other stuff: it will be hitting the charity room as stated, I’ve just been pressed for time. The FM2 has gone; 75 quid for the gorillas on it’s way shortly. The rest will come when I’ve had time to clean and photograph it. I’ll also need to think about packing for some of it as the only boxes I have that will take the TD-150 and cassette deck are ones I want to keep for my own kit.
bottleneck
pfm Member
quite!
I'd be building corner GRF's for that reason - if I were building Tannoys. It's a nice simple (room friendly) solution to a good sound.
I think what Joe was hinting at was that small GRF-R aint an improvement over the Berkely really.
Anyways....nice write up Tony.
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
lexi,
*****
Nice one, Tony.
It could turn out that even though larger enclosures are theoretically better, the bass you get from your 80-litre sealed cabinets might be better suited to you room. Keep the old enclosures just in case.
Joe
Not quite, but if you desire high efficiency and decent low bass the ~300-litre GRF-r cabinet is about as small as you'd want to go. I wouldn't say the GRFs are bass light but if you want to plumb the depths of Bolrog bass at >96 db/watt/metre you'll need a truly room-dominating pair of boxes.
*****
Nice one, Tony.
It could turn out that even though larger enclosures are theoretically better, the bass you get from your 80-litre sealed cabinets might be better suited to you room. Keep the old enclosures just in case.
Joe
cooky1257
pfm Member
Law of diminishing returns Tony, anything over 200-225L has very marginal benefit(just run the t&s through winIsd to see what I mean) with 180L a good domestic/ bass/waf compromise.
Reflex loading in an EBS alignment complements room loading really well and gives a wonderful deep breathy bass slightly less snappy than the IB Lancaster sound but one that drops through the floor.
Reflex loading in an EBS alignment complements room loading really well and gives a wonderful deep breathy bass slightly less snappy than the IB Lancaster sound but one that drops through the floor.