Ditton 15s were about £100-110 IIRC and I think the later XR variant was out by that time. It was a hugely successful speaker, first introduced in the mid-60s, so tons of them about and typically highly discounted. The 149s and LS3/5As were certainly more niche market.
I remember Ditton 15s being absolutely everywhere, I knew at least three friend’s with family systems ending in them (usually a Japanese receiver and PL12D or Trio KD1033 upstream). I’d put money on them being the biggest selling UK speaker of all time. Surprisingly it is getting a lot harder to find a really nice pair of them second hand.
I've got a pair of these that I've worked on. I re-wired them, replaced the cap and some new binding posts. Great little speaker. One of my cabs could do with a veneer repair 8-(.
There’s also the physical space thing, if you went for typically pretentious boutique audiophile components you’d need a crossover box the size of the speakers! The thing that is so clever about both the JR149 and LS3/5A is they managed to get class-leading results (even now!) in a very compact form and at a sensible price. That’s proper engineering!
I’ll certainly be interested to hear how you get on if you do build modern crossovers, though what I learned from replacing the caps with “better” ones, plus a lot of experience with Tannoys (expensive third party and DIY) is a change very often isn’t an improvement! I’d certainly expect to pretty much start again from scratch as just throwing boutique components at Jim Rogers’ original design will almost certainly not work. He very clearly understood exactly what he was doing and factored-in the behaviour of the components he used.
After I’d acclimatised I was surprised just how bad the film caps sounded in comparison to Falcon’s electrolytics, they just lost the balance and coherence of the speaker despite initially fooling me with a perceived increase in clarity. I found just the same with the Tannoys, and after much experimenting/expense use untouched original crossovers there.
PS Whatever you do I strongly advise you keep a stock pair of crossovers as a benchmark. It is so, so easy to fall down a rabbit hole with no firm benchmark to AB against. If you do decide to go this route I do actually have the second pair of crossovers (the ones with film caps) I’d sell as I’m done experimenting now. My JR149s are actually finished! \o/
I couldn't agree with you more on the aesthetics and cleverness of the design of the 149. I don't intend to throw money into boutique components but I will probably need a XO box which is fine by me. I want to see what the speakers can do and I'm happy to have an additional box if this achieves my objective. There is no doubt that the 149 was a great piece of engineering. My 149's are in the low 2000's, so an early pair of Mk1's. The XO's are original with no components removed or changed.
Some pretty strong claims made there?, care to share with us exactly what compromises you consider JR made and what impact they make to the sound stock speakers and what changes you have made to improve on the original design?.
Alan
Hi, Alan. In a nut shell, no. I'm not designing the XO's and I never made a claim that I would be or had any knowledge of how the changes would affect the 149's. I've simply stated I think the design is flawed. Not a claims, merely observations.