[jk@home]

I know the one thing I miss the most from my previous used speakers, Magnepan MMGs, are the sweet highs produced by the panels. My Fostexs aren't quite as clean, although better than others I have heard.

I recently talked to Eric Alexander of Tekton, for him to build me a couple of ribbon tweeter "pods" to go on top of my Tekton monitors, in the matching fiddleback finish. I thinking he's going to use a pair of the Aurum Cantus G2Si ribbons, his price was not much more than if I were to of diyed them myself.

He mentioned I would be required to open up the monitor cabinets for mods, so I'm assuming that involves adding something into the FE167Es circuit.

I have no problem with that; I'm more about high efficiency than the single driver thing. Rules are meant to be broken anyway, right?

[tubesguy2]

I have a question for the Tonian folks.  They look like nice speakers, and the people who have commented on them seem to like them very much, but could someone tell me what a "semi open baffle" speaker is?  They look like boxes, and no review has said anything about there being no back panel, so I'm at a bit of a loss to understand the basic principle here.  Thanks in advance - Pat

[jrebman]

Hi Pat,

I'm not sure what this means either, but I'll give it a shot.  There is a section of the back of the speaker that is open and a lot larger than a typical BR port or vent, and if you look in there you see the bottom half of the speaker is filled with folded felt and other acoustic stuffing, and the top half is basically open except for the rear of the tweeter assembly.  There are 3 panels of different sizes that install over this opening in the back and tune the bass accordingly.  The smallest panel gives the least amount of bass volume, and the largest, the most.  It doesn't appear to alter the tuning frequency much, if at all, bu6t the level.

It's certainly an interesting design and there is something going on that is not anything like a BR speaker or an OB either.

And yes, I'm still loving them, especially since I put them up on some 3" thick maple cutting boards, and hung a thick, textured wall hanging between the speakers.  Next step will be to install some short spikes in the cutting boards and then try some different feet under the speakers.

Hope that helps answer your question.

-- Jim

[R Browne]

And yes, I'm still loving them, especially since I put them up on some 3" thick maple cutting boards, and hung a thick, textured wall hanging between the speakers.  Next step will be to install some short spikes in the cutting boards and then try some different feet under the speakers.

Jim,

In what way do you find the cutting boards as being an improvement over the stock spikes on hard floor or carpet? I've heard of it done with other speakers and am interested as I own a pair of the TL-D1's which are currently on the stock spikes on a carpeted floor.

TIA

Robert

[jrebman]

Hi Robert,

For one thing it brought the height f the tweeter up a bit and I think that alone accounted for a decent amount of the improvement.  Secondly, they're just more steady on their feet so to speak and images seem more solid and details a bit more clean/clear/present, whatever you want to call it.  Understand that my carpet was on extra thick padding directly on top of a concrete floor, so I'm not sure the results will be the same on thin carpet on a suspended floor, etc.  But as I said, the added height seemed to be the best improvement.

I had them tilted back a bit before this and that helped with some reflection and room node issues, but when I tried tilting them back yesterday it was too much with being on the blocks too -- the tweeter was pointed too high from the listening position and the highs were clearly worse.

The blocks I have are from Michigan Maple Blocks and are 12" wide and 18" long and 3" thick.  They're cutting boards (edge grain, which is better) so not finished like fine furniture like Mapleshade products, and would probably need a lot of work to refinish as they have some sort of oil finish on them already.  They also don't cost like Mapleshade blocks.

HTH,

Jim