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Castle Harlech

madmike

I feel much better now, I really do...
Any good ? Pair for sale near me at £250. Look nice but no idea how they sound.
My amp is an Audiolab 8000a
 
I used to own a pair for a while. They need an articulate and detailed amp or they can be rather 'pipe and slippers'. I also found a high ceiling helpful - they were very boomy in the attic demo room of the shop. For £250 I'm not so sure, the value was in the beautiful cabinets really.
 
They are a small floor standing loudspeaker with an up-firing driver on top. The ones to go for are the Series 1 with the white drivers. These are light and fast moving but suffer with age (cracking); avoid if age damage has occurred. The next version with the carbon fibre drivers are not so musical. They can give a very nice, tall, projection and sound much bigger than they are. I bought my set (long gone unfortunately) from a chap in Bath who used them with Naim kit and they filled his substantial room well with his preferred Classical music. Fine for all types of music apart from heavy prog / metal / rock where they would fall to pieces with the small delicate drivers (hence why I sold mine).
 
I'm going to disagree with @stonehenge.

The series 2 with the black, woven, carbon fibre drivers was much superior to the mki, most of these will now have brittle, ready to self destruct drivers, unless they've been kept in optimal conditions.

I'll agree with needing a nimble amp if playing rock etc. and/or give them lots of space but for 250 notes it's a lot of speaker if used sympathetically.

Edit
On the Audiolab they may well disappoint. What would they be replacing?
 
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My Creek Evo 50a would be very suitable and is a substantial improvement over the 8000a (which I owned, had optimised and still sold on.....).
 
After RTL3s the Harlechs will sound more refined but also VERY laid back. If you like the slam from the 3s you'll miss it with the Hs.
These speakers could not be more different .
Maybe look out for B&W P4 for better speed or even P5 for extra bass weight.
 
Lovely cabinet, good extention and detail but the timing is nothing to write home about. Need a really good amp to give their best. Need space around them too or the slightly loose bass gets boomy.
 
Harlech was second from the top next to the reimagined Howard. What was unique about these two Castle models at the time wasn't so much that they were a modern slim floor standing design from a company that had previously majored on small to large 'bookshelf' designs, but the fact that both were quarter wave transmission line (QWTL) designs, each venting at the bottom of the enclosure and absolutely requiring the large included spikes being fitted in order for the QWTL to operate properly*. All other Castle 'speakers had been reflex loaded up to this point, the lone exception being Kendal from this same period, a diminutive infinite baffle slim floor stander. The first time I heard Harlech was at our old Castle dealers, well away from the walls, and properly spiked onto concrete flooring. These were quite impressive with a Naim 250, with a big expanse of sound from such small floor standers, almost like the smaller Magnepan models in this respect. The 1997 Castle price list had these down as being £879.90 in standard finishes and £999.90 in deluxe, with deluxe being yew and santos rosewood, with standard being pretty much everything else.

* with some users mounting these on plinths over here such that the end of the line isn't venting into deep cut pile carpeting with spongy under-pad beneath.
 
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Both the Harlechs and Howards came complete with plinths and spikes. The plinth left a narrow space below the downward port. I've seen many with these plinths missing, somewhat screwing the design principle.

Some other models also had the plinths but bolted straight to the cabinet with no space or downward port, like the Severn.

The best Castle model with qtr-wave was the Howard III.
 
Both the Harlechs and Howards came complete with plinths and spikes. The plinth left a narrow space below the downward port. I've seen many with these plinths missing, somewhat screwing the design principle.

Some other models also had the plinths but bolted straight to the cabinet with no space or downward port, like the Severn.

The best Castle model with qtr-wave was the Howard III.
Ah, I see that the QWTL models included 4 x plastic washers that were to be fit between plinth and enclosure.

I wonder how many are out there that have these washers elsewhere?

Castle-Classic-Manual-Final.jpg
 
I had Severn 2s in the mid 90s and they had the spacer washers too.
I've always fancied the Howards or Harlechs, but the earlier ones with the white translucent drivers do suffer from cracking cones.
 


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