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Sinclair Q16 speakers

M

Martyn Miles

pfm Member
Does anyone here remember them ? I actually owned a pair back in the late '60s. There are a pair on eBay (link). Starting price is £49.99 (!) They had foam grilles, I recall. The pair on eBay have green cloth grilles. That must explain the high opening bid...
 
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Don't remember Sir Clive venturing into speakers. At the same time I had a Sinclair amplifier, model 2000 if I remember correctly (maybe wrong). This was in my bedroom (I was 13 or 14) with a Garrard SP25 turntable and a pair of headphones (no speakers). Better than all my school chum's transistor radios !! I failed my driving test on a C5 !!

I also remember in my later teens, a lot of my school colleagues building amplifiers from Sinclair modules. I played in a band at the time with a Selmer 50watt amp and I remember some of my mates building quite powerful amps using these modules with a Sinclair pre-amp.
 
steveledzep said:
Don't remember Sir Clive venturing into speakers. At the same time I had a Sinclair amplifier, model 2000 if I remember correctly (maybe wrong). This was in my bedroom (I was 13 or 14) with a Garrard SP25 turntable and a pair of headphones (no speakers). Better than all my school chum's transistor radios !! I failed my driving test on a C5 !!

I also remember in my later teens, a lot of my school colleagues building amplifiers from Sinclair modules. I played in a band at the time with a Selmer 50watt amp and I remember some of my mates building quite powerful amps using these modules with a Sinclair pre-amp.
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Some of Clive's ( as he was then ) amplifier module designs were quite innovative, and influenced other designers. I won't say which, as it may upset some of the **** devotees on this Forum. His Q14 & 16 speakers were not in the same league. Inside that trendy ( for the time...) enclosure was a cheap, paper-coned elliptical drive unit. I believe it was the same model as used in a certain British television. The speakers were initially impressive, ( good phrase, that) but then reality to what you'd bought arrived. The foam 'grille' eventually disintegrated and people fitted a variety of cloths, etc. All very 'fab' were his designs. The Model 2000 speakers ( to go with the Model 2000 amplifier !) were the same drive units in two futuristic aluminium enclosures. He was (is ) a clever man, but his move into audio units wasn't all that successful. Martyn .
 
Ah the Sinclair amps - as mentioned above they could easily be modded and at times converted into real power beasts. Replacement output pairs (2n3055s) together with a really good heatsink and a beefed up power supply made disco amps a doddle to produce - and miles better than anything around at anywhere near the price at the time. 50w was easy when most people had only had 10w or 20w amps at the time. Talking of disco amps puts me in mind of a disco beast built by the then Midland Sound Services - basically a converted Vortexion 200w valve job with 8 EL34s -great sound and a pretty good speace heater too! - oops that was off topic....
 
I had some Q16s - Mine were all black and had a single elliptical driver and the read "pod" was a bit like the stuff they make egg boxes out of. I don't recall them being very good. A friend had some much bigger open baffle Sinclair speakers, with a larger elliptical driver with an inverted magnet arrangement to keep the whole thing slim. All the disadvantages of the Quad 57, without the wonderful sound. Looked quite cool in a 1970s modernist way. Never saw another set in use.
Julian Vereker (founder of Naim to the uninitiated) once said that the Sinclair amp modules are what set him on the path of designing the first Naim gear. He was so upset by the poor sound he decided to modify, and eventually decided what he had was a completely different circuit, though mostly informed by readily available text books on the subject. He's claimed to have "not invented anything new, just done what it said in the book, properly."
 
JemHayward said:
Julian Vereker (founder of Naim to the uninitiated) once said that the Sinclair amp modules are what set him on the path of designing the first Naim gear. He was so upset by the poor sound he decided to modify, and eventually decided what he had was a completely different circuit, though mostly informed by readily available text books on the subject. He's claimed to have "not invented anything new, just done what it said in the book, properly."
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The old story I heard was that Vereker attended an electronics seminar or something like that presented by Bob Stuart where at the end Julian asked Bob "If I wanted to make myself a decent amplifier whats the best way to go about it ?" Bob replied "just use some Sinclair modules with an oversized power supply."

...Bob later exclaimed "I never expected him to actually do it!"

Might be inaccurate or complete BS but a fun anecdote either way :)
 
A wonderful chap I used to know had worked with Sinclair and by all accounts he was a complete nightmare. He was obsessed with cutting costs despite having some innovative designs. This resulted in this friend, who was involved in the production process and sourcing components, having to use below par bits in the production of the amps. The failure rate was very high and yet Sinclair would not sanction use of components that would make his designs reliable. Its such a shame because by all accounts when the worked they were really good. Other comments on this thread seem to imply that Sinclair's designs did have some merit. Another aspect of this that saddens me is that I always loved the visual design ethic demonstrated in his 2000/3000 amps.
 
d m butcher said:
A wonderful chap I used to know had worked with Sinclair and by all accounts he was a complete nightmare. He was obsessed with cutting costs despite having some innovative designs. This resulted in this friend, who was involved in the production process and sourcing components, having to use below par bits in the production of the amps. The failure rate was very high and yet Sinclair would not sanction use of components that would make his designs reliable. Its such a shame because by all accounts when the worked they were really good. Other comments on this thread seem to imply that Sinclair's designs did have some merit. Another aspect of this that saddens me is that I always loved the visual design ethic demonstrated in his 2000/3000 amps.
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Yes, that 'Neoteric' amplifier was a good looking piece of kit.
M Miles
 
Martyn Miles said:
I saw one ( a Q16 ) with the front foam removed and the alltical driver appeared to be not unlike one in our TV set.
I am speaking of a 1965 TV set...
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As I'm sure you are aware, some ellipticals that look like that can sound rather good. Elac and Celestion ones come to mind. Roberts and Hacker radios had good sounding such units.
 
They made one of the first commercial class D amps in the sixties... it was bloody awful!
I believe it was specced at something like 20W and 1% THD but actually delivered more like 4W and 4% THD:eek:
 
Having done some googling, mine were Q14, and believe me, they were every bit as bad as you'd expect from a 1960s TV speaker, mounted in an eggbox. However at 14 if not younger, the Q14 driven by a horrible Heatkit amplifier that used germanium transistors was audio nirvana...
 
Arkless Repairs said:
They made one of the first commercial class D amps in the sixties... it was bloody awful!
I believe it was specced at something like 2W and 1% THD but actually delivered more like 4W and 4% THD:eek:
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The X10 was a 10W class D amp ad here http://oldwww.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/audio/gallery/x-10_ad.jpg. I never tried one but I did use the Sinclair Z30 and Z50. They were rather good with a beefy power supply that I built with ex-government big trannies, big electrolytics and HUGE paper output capacitors. Ah those were the days £100s worth of top quality stuff for pennies.

Here is the Z's schematic. Does it remind you of anything? http://media.soundonsound.com/images/forum/web_telia_com_~u31641623_Sinclair20Z30,20Z50.jpg.png

For parties I'd pair the 'HiFi' amp with my guitar speaker cabinets and boy could that combo fill a room!

Cheers,

DV
 
I believe that a well known Hi Fi repair shop that was originally based at Harrow on the hill, used Sinclair Q16 speakers for testing equipment.
 
Darth Vader said:
The X10 was a 10W class D amp ad here http://oldwww.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/audio/gallery/x-10_ad.jpg. I never tried one but I did use the Sinclair Z30 and Z50. They were rather good with a beefy power supply that I built with ex-government big trannies, big electrolytics and HUGE paper output capacitors. Ah those were the days £100s worth of top quality stuff for pennies.

Here is the Z's schematic. Does it remind you of anything? http://media.soundonsound.com/images/forum/web_telia_com_~u31641623_Sinclair20Z30,20Z50.jpg.png

For parties I'd pair the 'HiFi' amp with my guitar speaker cabinets and boy could that combo fill a room!

Cheers,

DV
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That's crude even compared to Naim! I can see the similarities though. The A & R A60 is even more similar to Naim....
 
Radfordman said:
As I'm sure you are aware, some ellipticals that look like that can sound rather good. Elac and Celestion ones come to mind. Roberts and Hacker radios had good sounding such units.
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I wouldn't disagree, as the Elac elliptical in my Roberts 707 sounds good.
Mind you, the bass and treble controls help.
You can achieve a reasonable 'BBC speech' balance with careful use...
 
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