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Tannoy Devon refurb/refoam

cooky1257

cooky1257

pfm Member
Fell in love with these when I first saw them, the original owner (so I was told by his son)was a bit of a Jason King, all smooth, bit of a 70's dude with the all white TV, shag pile pad to match, they were a special order white Formica.
Little bit more to do, in a dilemma wether to swap the push for chunkier terminals-which I've done on almost all other restorations...

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Tarzan said:
Ding, dong.They look retrotastic.:)
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All finished.
Changed out the joke push terminals, crossovers are fine, response looks pretty well matched after a quick tweak of the HF dias, they sound lovely.
Can't say wether these Formica'd cabs sound any better than the veneered variety but Cant stop playing tunes today...always a good sign.
 
cooky1257 said:
All finished.
Changed out the joke push terminals, crossovers are fine, response looks pretty well matched after a quick tweak of the HF dias, they sound lovely.
Can't say wether these Formica'd cabs sound any better than the veneered variety but Cant stop playing tunes today...always a good sign.
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Hi.
Wish my Devons looked as cool as those. :) Out of interest, do you have a preference for amplification with the Tannoys? I'm currently playing with a Quad 405/45 set up and still something not quite right. Get this sharp treble on some recordings which is driving me up the wall. Are Tannoys renowned for this? I always thought they'd be warmer sound.

Mike
 
faz said:
Hi.
I'm currently playing with a Quad 405/45 set up and still something not quite right. Get this sharp treble on some recordings which is driving me up the wall. Are Tannoys renowned for this? I always thought they'd be warmer sound.

Mike
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IME yes, Tannoys tend to have a flat or even rising HF response on-axis that doesn't roll-off as much with listening distance as speakers with conventional wide-dispersion tweeters.

One way to achieve HF roll-off is to angle the speakers away from the listening seat so that their beams cross either in front or behind you. IME you need to create quite a large angle before you'll hear an appreciable difference (15 degrees off-axis is usually what's recommended, any less and the change in HF output is marginal).

Another way is to use the tone control on your preamp to turn the treble down. I've only just recently discovered that the Treble control on my A-S3000 has the perfect contour for my Tannoy MG12s. I've never had a Quad preamp but the Tilt and Slope controls look like they'd provide a decent facility to shape your Devon's treble response to taste. How transparent those controls are in the signal path is of course another question, like I say I don't have any experience with Quad preamps so can't offer you any insights on that.
 
faz said:
Hi.
Wish my Devons looked as cool as those. :) Out of interest, do you have a preference for amplification with the Tannoys? I'm currently playing with a Quad 405/45 set up and still something not quite right. Get this sharp treble on some recordings which is driving me up the wall. Are Tannoys renowned for this? I always thought they'd be warmer sound.

Mike
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Quads are usually a safe bet tbh. It's worth remembering that Tannoy DCs are studio monitors so can be unforgiving on some recordings. As an experiment I'd try to establish if the sharpness you describe is common to both drivers or just one. I love them but can't get on with them unless the energy is set at -1 and roll off level and listening 15' off axis with horns crossing in front of you is pretty mandatory in my experience.They shouldn't sound in any way nasty though.
 
Looking good! I can also imagine getting away with a more colourful grille cloth with those white cabinets, though the original brown ones still look nice.
 
That’s almost mirror image! Amazing.Having fiddled for years to get mine pretty damn close I gotta say it was worth the hassle. There’s nothing more unsettling than the feeling you’re listening to 2 different speakers! No problem of that with these!
 
fraserking said:
That’s almost mirror image!
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I've looked at that graph three times now and my brain still can't evaluate how closely matched the two graphs are! I've obviously been spoiled by the ease of being able to overlay curves in REW...
 
ToTo Man said:
I've looked at that graph three times now and my brain still can't evaluate how closely matched the two graphs are! I've obviously been spoiled by the ease of being able to overlay curves in REW...
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Close enough/as close as I can get them.
 
fraserking said:
That’s almost mirror image! Amazing.Having fiddled for years to get mine pretty damn close I gotta say it was worth the hassle. There’s nothing more unsettling than the feeling you’re listening to 2 different speakers! No problem of that with these!
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Cheers Fray, they sound the same to my ears, the larger discrepancies are above 14khz or so so I'm happy.
 
ToTo Man said:
To clarify, I'm not criticising your pair matching Frank, rather my inability to read bar charts as naturally as line graphs!
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Eh don't be daft! I was merely making the point you can only go so far tweaking them before you disappear up yer own backside- it's undoubtedly well worth the effort but it can take bloody ages or you can get it in one go. As I'd said up thread I was initially pretty happy but just had to have another go to get them even closer and ended up spending a few hours down the rabbit hole :).
 
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The next dilemma is wether to respray the front baffles as there's a bit of bubbling near one tone control cut out....and the driver cut outs are always more of a very dark gray rather than black and look crap :)
 
If this wind would stop I could get on with respraying the baffles. For such small surfaces the prepping has taken rather longer than I anticipated but they will look fab once they are done.
 
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