I'm feeling quite pleased with myself. I picked up a pair of Rigonda loudspeakers in a local auction for £25 because they looked nice and thought they might be worth a punt.
I opened them up, cleaned the old sealing foam out, treated the woodworm, took the scratch remover and the teak oil to them, resealed them, wired in some speaker sockets. The drive units are intact and the caps look intact, so I've left them alone for now.
So far I've tried them with an old EMI RS101b valve amp (a whole 8W of push pull ECL83 goodness), a Marantz PM44, and tonight a Musical Fidelity A1, and I can't believe how good they sound! Especially with the MF A1. Midrange is awesome, bass is tuneful but certainly doesn't go deep, and slightly toed-in the highs are civilised. There's just something 'right' about them. Listened to Tom Waits' Alice tonight, sounding smooth, but put on a recording of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances and turned the wick up, and was impressed at the imaging and the scale of the music, transients are clean. You can hear the cabinet singing along a bit, but not in a bad way.
Just really impressed with how these are put together and how tuneful they sound. They're not going to supplant my Proac Studio 15s, and they're nothing like the ESL 57s sitting behind them in one of the pictures, but I wouldn't feel hard done by if I had to use the Rigondas alone.
I opened them up, cleaned the old sealing foam out, treated the woodworm, took the scratch remover and the teak oil to them, resealed them, wired in some speaker sockets. The drive units are intact and the caps look intact, so I've left them alone for now.
So far I've tried them with an old EMI RS101b valve amp (a whole 8W of push pull ECL83 goodness), a Marantz PM44, and tonight a Musical Fidelity A1, and I can't believe how good they sound! Especially with the MF A1. Midrange is awesome, bass is tuneful but certainly doesn't go deep, and slightly toed-in the highs are civilised. There's just something 'right' about them. Listened to Tom Waits' Alice tonight, sounding smooth, but put on a recording of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances and turned the wick up, and was impressed at the imaging and the scale of the music, transients are clean. You can hear the cabinet singing along a bit, but not in a bad way.
Just really impressed with how these are put together and how tuneful they sound. They're not going to supplant my Proac Studio 15s, and they're nothing like the ESL 57s sitting behind them in one of the pictures, but I wouldn't feel hard done by if I had to use the Rigondas alone.