Tony L
Administrator
Amazingly he actually suggested it!
Current Market Price? JR149s
- Thread starter RobJ
- Start date
Amazingly he actually suggested it!
ah ha... that is funny
Tony L
Administrator
It was actually well worth doing. I soldered a bit of solid-core copper underneath the circuit board connecting the two ends of the fuse-holder from beneath, so invisible from above and very easily reversed without trace should I ever want to. They are sounding stunning, I was playing some ECM label jazz on them earlier today and they sound remarkably like Quad ESLs to my ears, just so tonally natural, open and ‘not there’, and that is about the best thing I can think to say about a loudspeaker!
That's wood restoration out of the question then. Now I understand your long search for a mint version!
Tony L
Administrator
To be honest getting a good pair of alloy bases is even harder! Mine are the only pair I’ve seen in decades that don’t have any scratches at all. You can’t really do anything with a tatty pair as you’d lose the logo. Mine were boxed, which I assume helped them survive the years, though annoyingly I’m missing the top foam part of the packing (I’m actually amazed they got to me intact as the seller only used bubble-wrap, which is useless in most cases).
PS They were worth the wait/effort:
To be honest getting a good pair of alloy bases is even harder! Mine are the only pair I’ve seen in decades that don’t have any scratches at all. You can’t really do anything with a tatty pair as you’d lose the logo. Mine were boxed, which I assume helped them survive the years, though annoyingly I’m missing the top foam part of the packing (I’m actually amazed they got to me intact as the seller only used bubble-wrap, which is useless in most cases).
PS They were worth the wait/effort:
They are stunning Tony. Are those foam surrounds original? Surely not?
Tony L
Administrator
No, I had them made by a speaker foam company in the US who would do bespoke orders to my measurements. There was a bloke in the UK selling foam grilles for a long while for about 35 quid a pair, but annoyingly as soon as I found myself a pair of 149s they vanished from the market so I ended up paying several multiples of that getting some made! I got two pairs so I have a spare set in case I need them.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
I am starting to suspect that the original T27 had a design or manufacturing fault in the coil connection. The descriptions of T27 failure always seem to be that the bond out wire has broken. If the cause was partying, I would have expected overheated coils. If this was the case, fuses would not have helped.
Tony L
Administrator
This pair? They look very decent indeed, though I’d have liked a picture or two with the grilles off just to make sure they have the correct drivers etc. The wall mounts are worth £50 or so on their own, though I think they work far better on good stands 8-12” or so from the wall.
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
Assume that you have to fit all new drivers and figure out what the total bill will be. Any good authentic driver can be rescued and resold at a good price
calorgas
Generic middle-aged man
As far as I can remember I've had a total of one duff driver on all the pairs of speakers I've ever bought (which is quite a lot inc. models dating as far back as the 50's). It's true that you can be unlucky, but if you go in assuming that you'd need to replace all the drivers you'd probably never buy a 2nd hand pair, right?
Tony L
Administrator
Not necessarily. They use the same drivers as LS3/5As and the market for those in totally original condition is stratospheric. I suspect I was decidedly unlucky in my pair had dramatically altered in comparison to one another, individually they sounded pretty decent, but they were no longer anything approaching a pair and couldn’t really produce a central image anymore. I have a feeling they had got damp or had been stored in a humid environment as there was some sign of tarnish on the driver metalwork and a bit of mould on the B110 surrounds. I suspect this aged them far faster than usual.
Speaking to Falcon they consider all Kef drivers of this era will have aged to some degree due to the glues used (they claim to have improved this one aspect on their new units), and they suspect few vintage LS3/5As will actually meet the BBC spec now, but it is clear a great many still get huge enjoyment from them so they can’t be too bad. I realise I am quite exceptionally picky and I have the mindset that if I really want something I’ll throw money and time at it until it is pretty much perfect, but that doesn’t mean a well cared-for untouched original won’t sound very nice indeed. As an example I’m currently listening to my Tannoy Monitor Golds and they sound lovely despite being completely untouched since they were made in 1969-70 aside from my giving the compression drivers a just little tweak to better align them in the magnet gap. I’ve not even recapped the crossovers (though have compared them to third party ones and preferred them, so I guess they are ok!).
PS When buying secod hand speakers it is always worth plonking them right next to one another and panning some pink noise hard left and hard right. It shows up any matching issues real fast. Though with 149s it may not tell the whole truth as they have a tweeter level pot on the crossover that is far from idiot-proof, e.g. for some reason my pair were on full when I got them. Sounded awful!
ToTo Man
the band not the dog
IME the tweeter level adjustment on the 149s isn't very helpful in balancing the output of T27s that have drifted off-spec, as the drift is vary rarely a linear one. My REW measurements show that adjusting the tweeter pot basically gives an equal high-shelf boost or cut to everything above 2.75kHz, so is really only effective for balancing the level of the T27 with the B110 if the T27's response is linear in the first place, which based on my own experiences I'm willing to bet many vintage examples won't be. Falcon claim the ferrofluid in T27s can thicken over time. I cannot verify this, but I have found that a couple of pairs of 149s I owned in the past sounded quite uneven and claustrophobic up top, and increasing or decreasing the trim pot either made them sound harsher or even more veiled, it did not restore the transparency or openness/spaciousness to the sound.
Last edited:
ToTo Man
the band not the dog
Three years ago I measured the response of three different pairs of JR149s and uploaded the results in this post. Before measuring them, Pair B were by far the best sounding (most open, natural and uncoloured) to my ears, and the subsequent measurements showed that this pair had the most linear nearfield response from 1kHz to 20kHz. Despite having been recapped with ALCAPs, Pair A's response had something funky going on around 3.5kHz, and Pair C evidently had drivers and/or crossovers that were grossly out-of-spec!
davidsrsb
pfm Member
There is a special place in hell for the inventor of Ferrofluid.
A built in self destruct in any speaker using it. Remove the residue and the tweeter tends to tilt with a rising response.
Pair C in the plots above looks like the woofer "honk" problem as the tweeter should not be seeing 1kHz.
A built in self destruct in any speaker using it. Remove the residue and the tweeter tends to tilt with a rising response.
Pair C in the plots above looks like the woofer "honk" problem as the tweeter should not be seeing 1kHz.