Good thread this. I'm happy to contribute some gratuitous Tannoy pics ... first off my old GRFs, before I had the cabs braced and damped - they used to sing along quite a bit but always fun. The 7 foot harpsichord (it was a long room and that was the only place to put it) in the background was amusing especially when it was in the 'wrong' place for the music - no alternative but to shut your eyes. That Unison S8 was the most woeful amp I ever tried with Tannoys. Utterly hopeless. Garrard 401/Schick was good though. Audiosmile supertweeters.
Cabs after refurb - sounded better, not sure about the looks - with some new production Lockwood Majors. I had two sets of 15in drivers (Gold and HPD) at that time and could swap between cabs getting a sense of what worked best. The 15in Gold to my mind was clearly better than the 15in HPD, at least in these cabs. Didn't like the modern Lockwoods much - too boomy and uncontrolled - and they went back to the manufacturer. The underneath pic is the vent, which goes on the bottom of the aperiodic resistive chamber that the Lockwoods use. Nice lookers though.
Refurbed GRFs looked much better with the grilles on. Voyd TT at that point, SJS Arcadia Model 2 pre (both very nice), AN Io2 with a Kondo S6C SUT, there are two power amps I was experimenting with by-amping - 300b Audion monoblocks on the bass drivers, 2A3 SET on the horn tweeters. Tried both passive and active by-amping (though the crossovers were solid state rather than tube). Preferred going with just a single amp into crossover - just more musical and coherent, though there was more detail with the electronic crossovers. I also ran them with four Audion 300b monoblocks to see if that worked better and the amp mismatch was the issue. It didn't really help.
Vintage Lockwood Universal prior to being cleaned up and brought into use. Didn't keep these long, preferred my GRFs. Underneath the grey paint was orange Formica!
Tannoy Autographs, using the same 15in Golds I had in the GRFs. Far too big for the room they ended up in. TD124 in the ugly white plinth, Tram2 DHT preamp.
Cheviots - these are where I sourced the HPD315a drivers for my current speakers. The cabinets are a real bottleneck on these. (I also had some Chatsworths with 12in Golds, and some Lancasters with 15in Golds, but couldn't find pics of either).
Eatons - 10in HPD. I liked these, very musical indeed and the smaller cabinet seems to work well with the 10in driver.
My current Tannoy RFC Canterburys with HPD 315a and the top RFC crossover - it took me a while but these -at last - better my much-loved 15in Golds in GRF cabs - much lower, better articulated bass, the crossover point is more sensible (I always feel crossing 15in drivers at 2khz is a bit of a stretch) and the cabinets don't have the GRF's mid-horn peculiarities (fun as they are). Having said that the GRFs are still a superb speaker.