[Rick Craig]

A customer sent me a pair of Tannoy Gold 15" to design new crossovers for. Anyone ever listened to these speakers?

[Carl V]

yes,  they have a bit of a cult following & there have been a myriad of slight variations gold, red etc.,  I own the 10 inch variation  based on the SRM-B driver with both a stock Tannoy XO & the MANELY ML-10 variation.  I also own Adire Audio HE10.1 (original & series II).  A Colleague owns VLM Divas (floor stander with the Supertweeter phase array). The latter speakers use a variation of an Emmince driver (s)

If we were to contrast these 10" dual concentric based speakers with lets say a SSR or Garnet
most people like the "warmth" of the 10" dual concentrics, they often say dynamic, good off
axis sonics & sound-staging.  They do well with a variety of Tube systems.  They are not Highly
resolving in terms of "Hi-Fi" characterisitics.They are Easy to drive. 

When I had some Ronin OB dual concentric/coaxial based SEAS speakers people again mentioned good off axis sound & dynmaics.

I have not heard your MF based coaxials but I have heard a highend design based on that driver with some lovley BE Maple cabinetry.  Warm & nice offaxis sound.  So with broad brush strokes I'd say there must be something to this design. Where the phase might be well maintained.

I am sure your client likes & enjoys these 15" drivers.  I would assume he has a nice tube based system to drive these speakers.  I have been looking for my Freq. Response measurements from GR research.  But I have not been able to locate them on my HDD...perhaps they have been lost. Nonetheless, they were not ruler flat, however they were sorta smooth over a +/- 5 dB window.
At a few GTG most people liked these speakers & were quite frankly surprised that they like them as much as they did.

[Rick Craig]

yes,  they have a bit of a cult following & there have been a myriad of slight variations gold, red etc.,  I own the 10 inch variation  based on the SRM-B driver with both a stock Tannoy XO & the MANELY ML-10 variation.  I also own Adire Audio HE10.1 (original & series II).  A Colleague owns VLM Divas (floor stander with the Supertweeter phase array). The latter speakers use a variation of an Emmince driver (s)

If we were to contrast these 10" dual concentric based speakers with lets say a SSR or Garnet
most people like the "warmth" of the 10" dual concentrics, they often say dynamic, good off
axis sonics & sound-staging.  They do well with a variety of Tube systems.  They are not Highly
resolving in terms of "Hi-Fi" characteristics.They are Easy to drive. 

When I had some Ronin OB dual concentric/coaxial based SEAS speakers people again mentioned good off axis sound & dynamics.

I have not heard your MF based coaxials but I have heard a highend design based on that driver with some lovely BE Maple cabinetry.  Warm & nice offaxis sound.  So with broad brush strokes I'd say there must be something to this design. Where the phase might be well maintained.

I am sure your client likes & enjoys these 15" drivers.  I would assume he has a nice tube based system to drive these speakers.  I have been looking for my Freq. Response measurements from GR research.  But I have not been able to locate them on my HDD...perhaps they have been lost. Nonetheless, they were not ruler flat, however they were sorta smooth over a +/- 5 dB window.
At a few GTG most people liked these speakers & were quite frankly surprised that they like them as much as they did.

Thanks for your feedback. I've had some success with the Altec 604 mod and now am receiving more requests like this. Looking forward to the results.

[Rick Craig]

Sounds quite good on the first crossover iteration. Not as refined as what I'm used to but very listenable. The extra cone area gives a nice punch with drums. Much better tonality than a single driver system without giving up any coherence.

[Russell Dawkins]

I had a pair of Tannoy Ardens - 15's in a large ported box. Conventional wisdom amongst owners seems to be that biggest sonic improvements are made by bracing the original boxes or replacing them with heavier-built boxes of the same dimensions and port tube sizes and with carefully cutting off the protective dust covers in the centre of the 15" cone covering the exit of the HF horn throat.

I replaced the series caps on the HF units of mine with minor improvements resulting from the use of expensive military surplus copper foil in oil units.

Lower mids and  bass was already good. Main sonic flaw is some HF glare around 3 kHz.

They show the benefits of coincident configuration by imaging very well and being insensitive to off-axis listening.

If they need new surrounds, it is worth pursuing the proper units - you do not have to replace the entire cone and voice coil unit as Tannoy might have you believe. Real surrounds can be found at Speakerbits in Melbourne Australia:
http://44bx.com/tannoy/HPD_recone.html

[rollo]

A customer sent me a pair of Tannoy Gold 15" to design new crossovers for. Anyone ever listened to these speakers?

  You may want to search out what Dr. Loesch designed for crossovers used with these drivers. I have heard the results. very well done. A beefy cabinet with bracing and black hole pad and dampening resulting in probably one of the best sounds I've heard. BTW I own Nearfield Acoustic Pipedreams.


charles