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Building 120L cabs for 12" Tannoy Monitor Gold Rs.

I like your theory. I spent the afternoon with the backs off the Tannoys, tightening and loosening the driver bolts.
Too loose (I shall call it Tony settings :)) and although he was right, a lot of the edginess around voices at 1Khz or thereabouts does vanish, the bass goes all soft and one note. I can suddenly hear the port operating and all the taught musical basslines have got all warm and muddy.
Half a turn tighter, and I have some bass control back and the harshness is still not there, but go to Cooky's 'just tight + 1/8th of a turn more' and it's as good as I can get. Any tighter and the vocal skreeching returns....looser and the bass is all over the place.
Now add in ToTo theory and yes...toed in just 15 degrees to fire at a point behind my head, and the sound stage is perfect...large, clear and well clear of the boxes, but the bass still a tad loose and the highs just too polite. I even had to turn the energy to +1 ?
!!!! Tannoy lovers fainting all around :)
Firing straight at me and actually, on most recordings, with controls at 'level' it's remarkably good. Bass is excellent again and mid/top energy about perfect. On this setting Clapton's 'unplugged' was better than I've ever heard it on any system. Image tho? Not nearly are clean and 'present'. A bit small scale.
Toed right in to cross by my knees and the tonal balance returns to bass one note. No thanks.

So right now I've gone back to having them toed in about 20 degrees, firing just at the back of the chair, controls all at 'level' and the drivers at tight + 1/8th. It was the best compromise but the bass was still not quite as ecstatic as tighter drivers. A decent trade in. I hated the harshness! And then I remembered tone controls! The luxman has tone controls. So bass rolled off to 10.30 and...
OH!
OK!!!!
 
Rockmeister said:
Too loose (I shall call it Tony settings :)) and although he was right, a lot of the edginess around voices at 1Khz or thereabouts does vanish, the bass goes all soft and one note. I can suddenly hear the port operating and all the taught musical basslines have got all warm and muddy.
Half a turn tighter, and I have some bass control back and the harshness is still not there, but go to Cooky's 'just tight + 1/8th of a turn more' and it's as good as I can get. Any tighter and the vocal skreeching returns....looser and the bass is all over the place.
Click to expand...

I suspect we are actually all on the same page here, its just very hard to put into words! The thing I’ve been trying to get across is the old 1980s ‘Linn tight’ attitude is just plain wrong and sounds dreadful, and not just with Tannoys. The thing to do is always to listen and be prepared to play with very small increments as there will be a ‘best’ to be found, and it may not be where you expect it to be. Also remember my Tannoys are rear mounted with twice as many bolts, so I may actually get the same effect/coupling with slightly less tension. Same logic applies to screwed-on baffles and back-doors. Neither tight nor loose is right IME.

PS This is just the same with record decks; there are huge gains to be had by not having things like cartridges, armboards, arm mounting bolts etc either too tight or too loose.
 
Rockmeister said:
I like your theory. I spent the afternoon with the backs off the Tannoys, tightening and loosening the driver bolts.
Too loose (I shall call it Tony settings :)) and although he was right, a lot of the edginess around voices at 1Khz or thereabouts does vanish, the bass goes all soft and one note. I can suddenly hear the port operating and all the taught musical basslines have got all warm and muddy.
Half a turn tighter, and I have some bass control back and the harshness is still not there, but go to Cooky's 'just tight + 1/8th of a turn more' and it's as good as I can get. Any tighter and the vocal skreeching returns....looser and the bass is all over the place.
Now add in ToTo theory and yes...toed in just 15 degrees to fire at a point behind my head, and the sound stage is perfect...large, clear and well clear of the boxes, but the bass still a tad loose and the highs just too polite. I even had to turn the energy to +1 ?
!!!! Tannoy lovers fainting all around :)
Firing straight at me and actually, on most recordings, with controls at 'level' it's remarkably good. Bass is excellent again and mid/top energy about perfect. On this setting Clapton's 'unplugged' was better than I've ever heard it on any system. Image tho? Not nearly are clean and 'present'. A bit small scale.
Toed right in to cross by my knees and the tonal balance returns to bass one note. No thanks.

So right now I've gone back to having them toed in about 20 degrees, firing just at the back of the chair, controls all at 'level' and the drivers at tight + 1/8th. It was the best compromise but the bass was still not quite as ecstatic as tighter drivers. A decent trade in. I hated the harshness! And then I remembered tone controls! The luxman has tone controls. So bass rolled off to 10.30 and...
OH!
OK!!!!
Click to expand...

The description in your last paragraph is pretty much how I have mine set up.

I have my driver bolts at least 'Cooky tight'.
 
I should add that in all these experiments they remained at least 'good' swung to very very good when I was close and right now are sitting a smidge from being the best I ever heard. (Not to spoil the party, but some well driven SD acoustics SD1's were close and Snell A's with AN monoblock valve amps were even better everywhere but the bass), but it's all about compromises and I think the latter set up or its EQ now would be heading over 40grand, so I'm quite happy.
 
Mike P said:
The description in your last paragraph is pretty much how I have mine set up.

I have my driver bolts at least 'Cooky tight'.
Click to expand...

My room remains a bit of a problem. In smoother rooms I think I'd tighten up a half turn more to tighten that mid bass, but here and now? As good as I can get it I think.
 
I tried quite an extreme amount of toe-in last night, angling the speakers so the centres crossed at my feet. Well, it seemed extreme to me but when I checked on the protractor it was only about 10 degrees off-axis?! The result was interesting. Compared to listening on-axis:

- There was a noticeable narrowing of the soundstage, which now only spanned to the outer edges of the cabinets or perhaps a little wider.

- Centre image fill became stronger and instrument placement along the plane between the two speakers became more seamless and convincing.

- The perspective changed from one of a 'headphone-like' presentation where you feel as if you are immersed in the middle of the performance, to one of more distant observation of the performance happening on a stage some metres in front of you.

- The sound became more effortless, relaxed and easier to listen to, losing a fair bit of the edge and 'in yer face' PA-like characteristic of listening on-axis.
 
ToTo Man said:
I tried quite an extreme amount of toe-in last night, angling the speakers so the centres crossed at my feet. Well, it seemed extreme to me but when I checked on the protractor it was only about 10 degrees off-axis?! The result was interesting. Compared to listening on-axis:

- There was a noticeable narrowing of the soundstage, which now only spanned to the outer edges of the cabinets or perhaps a little wider.

- Centre image fill became stronger and instrument placement along the plane between the two speakers became more seamless and convincing.

- The perspective changed from one of a 'headphone-like' presentation where you feel as if you are immersed in the middle of the performance, to one of more distant observation of the performance happening on a stage some metres in front of you.

- The sound became more effortless, relaxed and easier to listen to, losing a fair bit of the edge and 'in yer face' PA-like characteristic of listening on-axis.
Click to expand...
Go for the full 15 degrees!
 
cooky1257 said:
Go for the full 15 degrees!
Click to expand...
Having re-checked the angle with string it turns out it's 13 degrees give or take, not the 10 degrees I previously thought, close enough to 15 that my dad can't be arsed doing any more moving today so I'll leave it as is just now! :)

I'm still very much enjoying the new soundstage perspective. The top-end is still a bit iffy on some material, I think this is just par for the course with vintage Tannoys and how lucky you are with the efficiency and alignment of the HF units installed and the condition of the horn throat and pepperpot. I suspect my MG12(HE)'s are very good in that respect, of all the other DC pepperpot drivers I've measured only one sample had a smoother HF response than these and the difference was marginal.

I listen mainly to studio-produced music which I find exposes the Tannoy's HF irregularities more so than classical recordings. Large scale orchestra sounds stunning, the scale and dynamics are off the charts. I listened to Espana last night (a Mike Valentine 'Chasing The Dragon' production) and felt like I was actually in the venue!...
 
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I wanted to add a final note to say that even the HL5+ anniversaries are (hopefully) off to a new home. I thought that they were the best all round speakers I'd ever heard, and they are are that good, but for me, building these and having them to muck about with has been so enjoyable, I'm giving them names. So all other siblings are getting the boot. I'm a one family kinda man :p:rolleyes:
 
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