Power hungry B%stards

bolly

Lunatic Member
Thor has those CV's, and those Ohm I's on ebay; What other big diameter driver, power hungry speakers are out there?

Greg
 
My new (1980 version) AR-9's seem to crave plenty of the wattage nector and I am only happy to oblige. ;)


Retro
 
How about the old Bose 901's? They sure needed some big power. Oops, the question was about 'big' driver speakers. The only thing 'big' about Bose is the hype.
 
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JBL B-380

I have a B-380 JBL sub that will make my Adcom 565 look anemic. . . .I ran a bridged 555 on it for years and ocassionally I would light the clipping indicators. . . .Dim the lights thats for sure. . .
 
Original Carver Amazing's, the ones with two 30" ribbons in each panel instead of one 60" long one in the later versions. I think I have an old brochure around here for them, and RECOMMENDED power for them was 1,200 watts per channel. Real piece of cake you know. Almost 20 years ago, just get yourself a couple 12 or 15 hundred watt per channel amps and there you go!

The AR-9's do suck up the power don't they? It's a good feeling.

Toasted Almond
 
Dahlquist DQ-10's and their power hungry crossover network come to mind. You might as well not even bother listening to them if you don't bring at least 250 watts to the table.

Mike
 
Ohm A's

I remember hearing a pair of Ohm Model A's in about 1970. They blew my mind, made everything else we heard the rest of that day sound like crap. The salesman said that they would easily suck the biggest McIntosh, ESS or Phase Linear amps dry. Minimum recommended amp was 350W/ch, 8 ohms.
They did have a bad habit of the Walsh driver jumping out of the surround and having to be reclamped in place.
Cheers,

Graham
 
Martin Logan CLS - I've been through four amps (increasing in size each time) with these speakers getting to the point I don't clip the amp. I thought my Carver m1.5t was hot stuff until I hooked it to these and lit all the lights. Same with a Carver TFM-35 and A500x, except these peg the needles. Now use a Carver A760x (one ohm stable - 8 ohm 380 watts per channel 4 ohm 600 watts per channel 2 ohm 1150 watts per channel )

I could use twice that much for my 18" bass horns that can take 1600 watts each. As is, the Carver A500x ( 8ohm 250 watts per channel 4ohm 400 watts per channel 2ohm 750 watts per channel ) kind of tickles them. I've been thinking aobut only using one bass horn and bridging the amp for 800 watts at 8 ohms.
 
carbonman


Man I would have loved to hear the OHM A's I think they liked between 3-400 watts. My OHM F's take roughly 250-300. Problem with the A' and F's is you could not power them with say a hundred watts. Well ya could but you could whisper louder then they would play and most likely you would blow a coil from clipping.

Grumpy
 
I had a pair of Pioneer HPM 200s for many years. They were very nice sounding units but even though the official min. power spec was 25 watts/channel - The reality was that 100 w/ch was a realistic min power. I drove them with an Hitachi SR2004 which used a "Class G" amp rated at 200 w/ch but which switched in an extra power amp stage which could deliver an advertised 400 w/ch for transients

That bad boy was once tested on a Macadam analyser and literally blew the Macadam's 1000 watt dummy load to Hello! [Can you spell destroyed - Boys and Girls?]. God only knows what the actual power o/p was but I suspect the distortion figures at that level were not especially pretty to see or hear.]

I eventually went in the opposite direction and moved over to Klipschorns and a moderately powered tube amp. The Klipsch's are definitely superior but I will never knock the sound of the HPM/Hitachi combo.
 
Originally posted by Rob
How about the old Bose 901's? They sure needed some big power. Oops, the question was about 'big' driver speakers. The only thing 'big' about Bose is the hype.

Rob;
I have never owned any Bose stuff and am aware of their poor rep, however I do still have a vivid memory of a demo of a pair of 901's. I had just got out of the air force in 1970 and a coworker at the place I worked took me to Berkley to a high end stereo store. They had a demo set up of 901's and played some Lee Micheals hit song with the watt meters peaking well over 250 watts. The sound was just amazing in the pressure waves I was feeling in my chest. I guess I had never heard anything play so loud without clipping and distorting. While I was much impressed there was no way I could afford such a setup with my then $135/ week pay :p:

I have seen that 901s still sell well on e-bay. Are they bad speakers? I seem to recall they were like an array of 9 4" drivers and required a active equilizer. Sure were small for the amount of SPL they could crank out.

Lefty
 
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My Maggies sucked...

...lots of juice from my big Mac! My ol' Magnepan MGLR1 planars were 85dB @ 1W/1M and required more than the 300 WPC (@ 4 ohms) my McIntosh MC7200 could produce at 100dB+! Many times the LEDs on the Mac's Power Guard would flicker on and off during rather loud passages indicating soft clipping.

Big difference with my super-efficient Klipsch Cornwalls (@ 98.5dB) driven by my meager 50 WPC MC250 amp...at over 100dB levels, I doubt I'm pushin' any more than 5 watts per side with plenty headroom to spare for those thunderous musical peaks!
 
Jim,

I see nice tubes in your avatar but none in your system. When you planning to move to the vacuum state? :)
 
I'm gettin' there, slowly but surely!

Two years ago I owned (for only a few months...long story) an AMC CVT 1030s tube preamp with my SS McIntosh MC7200 amp and loads of sources. For the short amount of time I owned this system I thoroughly enjoyed them, and even did some tube rolling, replacing the stock Chinese and Sovtek tubes with a pair of NOS JAN Philips 12AU7s and 12AX7WAs...what an improvement that was.

Since having to sell nearly everything I owned (was laid off/filed bankruptcy), my present system is straightforward and simple (see my sig). I wanted to break into tubes again, but my cash flow is nill. A month ago I saw on eBay this nifty lil' tube pre made in Hong Kong; a 6SN7 SRPP linestage with tube rectification and dual chokes, brand new for $245! I had a little cash set aside, so I bought it using the BIN feature, and am still waiting for it to arrive. Maybe next year I'll have a decent income tax refund and will be able to purchase a companion tube amplifier to mate with the new pre I'm getting...that's the plan anyway!
 
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