About 18 months ago, Jeff Bagby contacted me asking if we would be interested in developing a high-efficiency design he had been thinking about. For those of you who do not know Jeff, he is a very talented crossover designer and also the author of a number of software programs for speaker design. Naturally, we were interested, but we had a lot on our plate at the time.
A few months later, John Z. contacted us asking which of our speakers we would recommend for use with his low-power tube amps. I told him that we did not have a design I thought would be appropriate, but might be developing one somewhere down the line. He asked what it would take to get the project off the back burner. I told him that if he wanted to order a pair, Jeff would certainly be excited at the prospect of turning his ideas into reality. John sent a deposit check and we started working on the project.
Since this design would utilize a 12" JBL woofer, I knew the cabinet would be quite large. But I didn't want it to look overly oppressive. So I talked to a friend of mine, Bruce Campbell, about helping us out. Bruce is a VERY high end furniture designer and he was willing to give it a shot.
We worked out all the interior volume and high requirements and I gave Bruce the specifics. He came up with about two pages of sketches, many of which were very unique. But one of them stood out. It was a cabinet in the shape of an obelisk. As we discussed various options, we realized that the lack of any parallel surfaces in the cabinet would be an advantage. And we liked the fact that although the cabinet was wide enough to accommodate the 12" woofer, it was slender enough at the top so it came off as being smaller than it actually was.
We then built a pair of cabinets we tentatively called the "OB3's" and I delivered the design to Jeff for his crossover development. Jeff is a perfectionist, so we knew the process would take a while. But we also knew that when he finished, it would be a very good speaker. And, it was.
The "OB3's" feature the same G2 tweeter that we have come to love in our HT3's. For the midrange and woofer, we needed high sensitivity drivers. PHL makes some very good drivers and we chose to use a 6.5" version for the midrange. As for the woofer, JBL seemed to be the darling of the high-sensitivity crowd and it fit our design criteria quite nicely.
The resulting speaker is 95db efficient and very tube friendly.
How does it sound? Well, John got them last week and set them up over the week-end. Today I received an email with the following comments:
"I really feel that a friend of mine has worded better than anything that I could write.
She asked me, "Where is the artist?"
Your HT-3's are an excellent speaker but, in my opinion, you have raised the bar with this set of speakers.
The sound? - Andrea said it best, so real that it is hard to imagine that the artist is not in the room. I do not think that there is a better compliment for a set of speakers.
I was playing a record album by a local artist, Ron Hudson (Spanish Classical Guitarist), the title of the song was "Soleares" and bearing in mind that these speakers are not even broken, the clarity, range are just absolutely wonderful.
Thank you and by the way, this pair will never be up for sale on Audiogon.
- John"
This, of course, is a special purpose speaker designed for music reproduction with low power tube amps. The drivers are more expensive than those in our HT3's and the cabinet is infinitely more complex and difficult to build. There are no parallel surfaces in the cabinet and just calculating all the angles was a feat in itself. So this will be the most expensive speaker we have ever offered. It will probably start at about $8995 per pair and go up from there depending on the finish.
Well, there you have it. Name away!
- Jim
