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[FS] Stacked pairs of Quad ESL57 on stands

Incidentally Karl, was the deck in question an LP12? I seem to remember so. I can't remember the arm, I'm guessing Ittok or maybe Akito. It was a good 11-12 years ago after all and as you'll remember I wasn't especially well at the time and still recovering from my injuries. I know you later moved on to another deck. Did the one I saw escape the fire you had, or was it one of the casualties?
It was an lp12 and Akito arm - I upgraded it massively but then sold and moved over to a well tempered Amadeus. It was only my “collection” of other tt’s and boxes that I lost in the fire.

edit - not luckily I lost other tt’s - it was very unlucky
 
Steve - can I ask how the connections work? Can everything be connected from one amplifier, or do you need two amplifiers and a crossover? Or are there connection options, depending on what you want to do / what equipment you have?
 
Just like to say, Steve, that one of my hifi friends has stacked 57s run from a sixties Sansui valved integrated. I've heard his singles and his added one in stack form; no contest; great improvement; in scale as well (the only reason two singles didn't do it for me before I went big Quad.
 
Steve - can I ask how the connections work? Can everything be connected from one amplifier, or do you need two amplifiers and a crossover? Or are there connection options, depending on what you want to do / what equipment you have?
You certainly can! They work from one amplifier, the way I have them. I currently have a short link connecting L upper to L lower and another one from R upper to R lower. The plugs for these can take another speaker plug, so in it goes. I have also tried biwiring from the same amp, so one speaker wire goes from L amplifier to L upper, another goes L amplifier to L lower, and the same for R channel. You could biamp if you wanted, but you do have to use the existing crossovers in the speakers. You cannot bypass these without extensive internal surgery. I did hear of someone, I think it was one of the hifi manufacturers, who did make an active pair of Quads. The snag is though that you then have to amplify after the XO to several thousand volts for the EHT part of the panel and this gives you huge safety problems for obvious reasons. In the normal design of course the speaker feed is low voltage and this is then stepped up inside the enclosure, which is an earthed metal cage into which you can't put your fingers.
 
How tall are the stands and can you alter the angle of the panels to tune the speakers or are they fixed in position.
 
How tall are the stands and can you alter the angle of the panels to tune the speakers or are they fixed in position.
Just under 6 feet, and they are fixed. You could adjust them by moving the attachment points, I've never felt the need. The thing is that a panel so big and mounted on a curve doesn't need careful alignment, there's always one bit of it pointing at you.
 
I've got some interest from someone of this parish who is talking about transport arrangements, though we have yet to finalise a deal. For anyone who is humming and hawing, they will not be around for ever.
 
Having built some stands to stack ESL57s and used them at the Wam show and in testing I can say that these should sound amazing and someone should snap them up quickly.

As SavvyPaul has observed, getting the stands to do this is much more of a challenge than buying 2 pairs.

With PaulR and PaulO and JonR we have 4 pairs (3 functioning pairs at the moment) that we intend to demonstrate in some form of a phased array to show what can be done with ESL57s, maybe at the Wam show but more likely locally to Brackley as it is a lot of effort to move them anywhere. Also I will need to build a better DIY stand for one of the pairs of stacked quads having learnt what I did badly first time round.
 


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